I actually can't use Windows Live Messenger properly, because my Windows XP machine with 256MB RAM is having serious troubles. Messenger is taking up a whole fifth of my resources (51MB!), which is just ridiculous! Messenger is meant to run in the background and tell me when someone wants to chat, what happened to the purpose of the program?
I'm looking at my contact list without being patched, and I just think Messenger looks incredibly ugly. Why, because it is bloated. I don't want to know about my pending messages, I don't want to search for a contact, or know every activity my contact is doing.
So what does Windows Live Messenger need? Nothing. It needs nothing new, it needs improving. Yes, you may be thinking skins and extensions. Well you can already do that, they are just are awfully done making the feature near to useless. Add-ins took the extensions idea and spat on it, someone must of gone through some stress to produce the add-ins feature and they were never given the right time or tools to complete it properly.
Also here comes my rants about the installer. The installer is the first thing you notice when you download a program. So why does Microsoft pump out a slow, ugly and buggy installers to us all? They set a negative image for the program from the moment someone uses it, it needs changing.
This is what I say, this post was never meant to be nasty to the team. This is my way of expressing my views and hoping someone can do something about them. In conclusion Windows Live Messenger is the corny and bloated version of MSN Messenger, thanks to it's new best friend Mr. Windows Live. Bug fixes are not improvements. The team should take what they have done with the sign in feature and apply that time and effort into all the current features. I just hope I'm not alone, after all my views are useless to add if everyone else thinks they are crap.
Ah, this post got slightly too long, whatever happened to my simple idea, d'oh.
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Take the search feature, that can be improved by listing contacts that are similar to the spelling of your search, and it can have a switch to contact list button as well. Simple things make big differences
Maybe you don't want to know every activity your contact is doing, but the problem is they want you to know! Back in MSN 6 people would find ways to put that in their names instead... and without the WLM nicknames you wouldn't have been able to see who they even were... so I think the PSM is a great addition too.
I'll agree about add-ins being complete shit though.
And as I always point out to people who dislike MS products... there are alternatives. There's Gaim, aMSN, Trillian. Plently clients you can use. And if you talk to your friends nicely, maybe you can switch em to another network, then you could use Google Talk, Skype, ICQ... so many options. A lot of them fix you're main complaint which is the bloat.
PART 1:
Gotta disagree on most points here.
First the installer, I've had no problems with it, it's always been clear and fast. Yes it's ugly, but it's what an installer should look like, if it had a fancy skin, you'd just moan about that and say it was bloated and taking up too many resources. It's a lot better an installer than, say, IE7. Where I had to reboot my computer 3 times...
Memory usage, I find it goes between 30 and 50MB (this is with plus installed, so I'm gonna say it'd be lower without), but I don't find that excessive at all, these days. Internet Explorer and Opera use around that amount, firefox uses about three times that much, iTunes uses slightly more. I struggle to find many apps I use constantly that use less than WLM.
OK, the more critical points... bloated contact list? Pending messages? Never seen it. Search for contact I do find very useful. Whenever I'm in Linux using Gaim I struggle to find contacts without the Nicknames feature (tell me that wasn't a good addition in WLM...) and the search wheel.
Sure, they need to improve current features, but the programming is more buggy than anything else. I have to disagree that improving has to be done before bug fixing. They should have an intense bug fixing period, where they literally hunt for bugs, and then they should start improving things like load, status changing, psm, nicknames, FILE SHARING!! (not sharing folders!, the actual file sharing) and the likes. They need to bug fix first though because if they just keep on improving/adding stuff the load will get even worse, and the program itself will be so buggy that people will have to stop using it. Both things are important.
The first step to do this is probably to fix bugs fast, and release more betas to the public for bug checking, simply because when things get final from Microsoft, it's so full of bugs, and there are so many unexpected changes that the beta testers didn't even know about, since the release was nothing like any of the betas that the testers got. Everything needs testing before it gets released, otherwise it looks hurried, bloated, crappy, etc.
The second step to doing this is probably to listen to everyone's comments about the program. Seriously, people complain about the transfer system (people aren't invited for transfers, transfered files that "MIGHT" be dangerous are AUTOMATICALLY deleted without user permission (it might have been a really important file as far as anyone is concerned), the transfers are really slow at times, no details on time remaining or anything of the sort is given (except the very simple amount of bytes left method) and the general look of it is bad.
The look of the program itself has been improved a lot, but they should focus not only on colours, but on the layout of the program (e.g: main window, conversation window) The conversation window buttons at the top don't even have text anymore (really bad idea!) the contact list keeps changing every new build, and not for the good either (search contact bar moved around, add contact button has no text, add contact button isn't that obvious. There are two search bars for no good reason. They could very easily make it one search bar with 2 buttons or a check box or something.
In general, the program went from 8.7/10 to 6.5/10 because they spend more time advertising it than working on bug fixes and improvements.
However, bug fixes are just as important as improvements, especially for a program used so widely, but for which bugs are rarely fixed (1 to 10 per final release it seems).
Installer: Yeh, it is REALLY slow, too slow for that matter. The first private Beta build installed just as fast as WLM 8.0, but the later refreshes introduced a slower installer. Apparently it something about logging of the install process. But yeh, i hope they speed up the installer before the final release.
Finally, i don't think any major changes (improvements) are gonna be made before 8.1 goes final. Managed Testers were asked to only report bugs for now, as that is what they'll be focusing on for the remainder of the Beta.
www.vistaskin.pt.vu
WLM don't need new features, but... it is ever good if new features come in!
sorry bad english... i'm portuguese...
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