Paul Smith's Blog

  • About
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

MSN Messenger 7 beta

13th December 2004 in Technology

Well with Mark informing me that Microsoft have rolled out a beta version of MSN Messenger 7, I thought it was time a give my opinions on it after using it for a couple of hours. It is only the beta version so of course all of these things could be rendered obsolete with the arrival of the final version.

Things I like:

MSN Messenger 7 (beta) signin

Very snazzy, now displaying the users image file along with it!

MSN Messenger 7 (beta) main window

Nice new look!

MSN Messenger 7 (beta) hand writing

Handwriting support, or "mousewriting", you can go ahead and draw with the mouse all in the message box, something that was only previously found on things like a Windows XP Tablet PC, or graphics tablets.

MSN Messenger 7 (beta) contact card

Very cool idea, however far too limited at the moment - see below.

Things that are bothering me:

I've got "Click here to customize MSN Messenger" on the bottom of my windows, no thanks, get rid of that please.

"Winks" silly full window animations and sounds that pop up every time someone sends you one (you can disable them automatically playing within options). Worse still is having MSN sound disabled doesn't effect these. Something Microsoft need to address in the next build in my opinion.

The contact cards. Too limited, yeah it's really cool that you can see what's happening on someone's MSN Spaces page, their pictures and music etc. But why not make it more customizable? Being able to specify my own RSS feed or something similar would be great. I've got my blog here, I don't really want to setup one at MSN Spaces just to take advantage of this feature. Making this feature more customizable would turn it into not just a feature, but a killer feature, but I can't see it realistically happening unfortunately.

Overall it's a good improvement over 6.2. Perhaps a bit heavy with gimmicky features like the "winks" and custom emote packs, but definitely a worthy successor to previous versions.

This entry was posted by Paul and is filed under Technology.
15 comments »

15 comments

Comment from: Wester Visitor

Wester

Heh looks cool can't wait to try out that handwriting tool thing. ;)

14th December 2004 @ 01:56 Reply to this comment

Comment from: hannah and lisa Visitor

hannah and lisa

i already have msn beta but i want the one so that i can get the handwriting thing because all my mates use it and i dont have it!!!! please it would be verry helpful if you cou could put a hyperlink on this page so that i can quickly download all the resourses i need so that i can join in the fun with my frends!!

thankyou....

......a very happy person! lol x

28th December 2004 @ 02:04 Reply to this comment

Comment from: Paul Member

I think the most likely cause of it being disabled is not having Microsoft Journal Viewer installed on your system. This can be downloaded from www.windowsupdate.com it should appear under "general updates" somewhere.

If that doesn't help you could try posting on the MSN Messegner newsgroup, a web front end can be found at http://communities.microsoft.com/newsgroups/default.asp if you scroll down the list on the left there should be a group called msn.messenger.

However version 7 is still in beta and therefore not finished software so there is no "official" support on it.

28th December 2004 @ 02:35 Reply to this comment

Comment from: backerone Visitor

backerone

can some one e-mail me telling me the site to download th handwritting thing!!!

13th January 2005 @ 05:25 Reply to this comment

Comment from: kim Visitor

kim

i need help doin the handwriting thing on msn beta will u help me????????????????????

17th February 2005 @ 15:09 Reply to this comment

Comment from: kim Visitor

kim

also can some one e-mail me telling me the site to download th handwritting thing!!!

17th February 2005 @ 15:10 Reply to this comment

Comment from: soliman Visitor

soliman

welocme

5th March 2005 @ 06:55 Reply to this comment

Comment from: lj Visitor

lj

can u send the beta msn plz

22nd March 2005 @ 20:39 Reply to this comment

Comment from: sarah Visitor

sarah

thank you very much

27th April 2005 @ 17:54 You are currently replying to this comment

Comment from: sugar Visitor

sugar

stop asking for the link, get it from Messenger Tools

22nd June 2005 @ 11:55 Reply to this comment

Comment from: ruth williams Visitor

ruth williams

how do u get funky ritin for messenger like it flashes or sparcles reply quickly please

14th February 2006 @ 14:49 Reply to this comment

Comment from: ugy face Visitor

ugy face

THIS MSN THING SUCK!! U BITCH! U SUCK 2!!!

4th May 2006 @ 02:27 Reply to this comment

Comment from: John Visitor

John

Blogs please:
ALINA

5th June 2006 @ 19:44 Reply to this comment

Comment from: Nagy Visitor

Nagy

ngf

11th August 2006 @ 20:20 Reply to this comment

Comment from: mustaf Visitor

mustaf

hi i will like to know more about u

5th October 2006 @ 16:35 Reply to this comment


Form is loading...

Comment feed for this post

Copyright © Paul Smith 1996-2019, privacy policy & cookie policy.