As previously posted by absorbation, Messenger for Mac version 6.02 has been released. I have been waiting to do a MFM review for ages now, but only when some news popped up or an update was made - so it didn't seem too random. MFM features a clean and easy to use interface, chat logging, spell checking of messages, the ability to talk to your Yahoo! Messenger contacts, and more.

Messenger for Mac and Windows Live Messenger differ in many ways (see side-by-side comparison). One major difference is the ability to be signed into two different accounts at the same time, one account for personal use and the other for corporate use. Another is how conversation history is saved. MFM logs are much nicer looking and easier to read compared to WLM.

One disadvantage when using Messenger for Mac is the limited in-chat features. There are no games, MFM does not support handwritten messages or voice clips and worst of all there is no Video Call support whatsoever. Hopefully some of these features are on the "to be added and not abandoned" list.



Much of the stuff you are probably used to by now in Windows Live Messenger is in Messenger for Mac. The emoticons are the same as in WLM; custom emoticons, display pictures , and file transfers all work too.

No program is perfect and just like any other program, Messenger for Mac has a couple of bugs that I have noticed. When moving a contact from one group to another, dragging and dropping, it can take up to several seconds for the contact to move. A user might try moving the contact 2 or 3 times if he is not aware of this bug.

I also noticed there is no way of viewing a contact's full personal message other than expanding the contact list width wise and reading it like that (this can be very annoying). Personal messages do not show up in a conversation window like in WLM nor do they show up when you try to right-clicking/ctrl+clicking and then selecting "get info" on the contact in question.

My personal opinion is that I prefer Windows Live Messenger to Messenger for Mac. WLM looks better in my opinion but MFM is not that bad itself. The lack of features is one of the main reasons, but I am sure I can live without video calls until the team finally adds it in.

I hope this little review answered some of the questions you may have had about Messenger for Mac.

View a screenshot of Messenger for Mac

It's all good every Messenger website telling everyone there is a new beta out, yes I think everyone knows that. However I don't think people are expressing their views enough. This update is meant to fix all the problems Windows Live Messenger has, but Microsoft seems to think that only means bugs.

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.