For most users, Windows Live Messenger is an excellent piece of software, serving a common purpose: communicating. It gets a bit buggy a few times, blocks your connections for an unknown reason, decides to lose a few message here and there, but still makes you very happy when it actually does work, which is almost always lately.

Now I certainly do not want my first post to show a biased side of me (I am a proud user of Windows Live Messenger, and have been for as long as I can remember using a computer). Yet, anyone who's ever looked around at other IM software, such as Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, GAIM or Skype (well, it does have a chat feature) know that the software has something that is somehow wrong.

Some blame the new Installer (which I do believe will win the Grammy for 'worst setup process' of the year), other mention the software being bloated with useless features (I can't say I don't agree) and several others hold the buggy code responsible for it (people do believe that it's what's inside that counts).

My point of view is a bit different, I do believe everything mentioned above does help the software being way less desirable (don't you kids go thinking dirty now), but something else 'bugs' me (yes, I see the irony of the chosen words right there).

I think it all has to do with the features which are wrongly integrated in the software. Don't get me wrong, a lot of them have a good purpose (at least to me) but they seem to have been thrown in there in such a rush, that no planning, analysis or just common thinking efforts were used to develop the ideas.

Take for example the chat logging feature, which has been there for as long as I can remember (I might not be that old, but that still means a several number of years). To this day, chat logging is still put up in the simplest way, allowing no emoticon saving, no encryption possible, no management what's so ever of the logging and barely a color/font reproduction. I'd also mention the design of the chat log page to be simply unpleasant, but it's not that important to me (again, it's what's inside that counts).

Exporting/Importing a list of contacts also joins my list of disappointingly coded features; the idea is brilliant but actually letting us select who we want to be in the new list would've been way better. Allowing people to create lists of contacts for work, social events and being able to distribute it without the hassle of opening the file with notepad and editing it manually would be something that I'd consider essential in such a feature.

The 'add nickname' feature is also poorly implemented, although it does what you want it to do hence change the user's original nickname to one you chose, there is no way to know (unless you right click and look manually at the e-mail) which contact is who (something that could be useful when having a friend with two e-mail accounts, or just two friends sharing the same name).

Another instance of this situation could is the contact's details as it's called. The idea of keeping personal information private or not, depending of who sees it is very well thought, but it gets to be such a hassle to give permission to each of your contacts who decided wanted your phone number. Not to mention that the Space to Messenger update is most of the time not only late, but very buggy. Creating some kind of business card which you could send to the contacts you want would be perfect, and easier to manage.

A lot of other features and options could be mentioned, making this Windows Live Messenger’s biggest problem (at least by me): not fixing/developing what is present in the software, yet keeping on implementing other new features.

Now I should probably apologize for not only forgetting to introduce myself earlier, but also for putting you to sleep during this essay. My name's albert, and I’m a new msgstuff poster, and I’ll be looking forward to your comments.

Till the next news, see you at the forums.