Instant Chat (Microsoft MSN Messenger Service)

Name: Recon

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Product:	Microsoft MSN Messenger Service
Date:	31/01/08 (599 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quick, Easy, Free, Popular, Fun!

Disadvantages: Alerts can be annoying (but also switched off)

I have been a user of msn for years now since I first had a computer. It is a great free service that enables you to chat with your friends, send video calls, audio calls, play games, draw pictures, send smiles, send winks and even more to your friends totally live! Whether you are organising a night out, or just can't get enough of speaking to your friends/relatives, then this is the perfect application! It is totally free to download, so just head to www.msn.co.uk and download it there. MSN is available for PCs and Macs, but you will have to head to the apple.com site to download msn for Macs. It is a much later version for the Mac, so you can't do the latest stuff like video calls, send winks and audio calls.

You must have an MSN or Hotmail account to use msn, although I have seen people with yahoo addresses and other ones, so I am not entirely sure but your safest bet is to just create an msn/hotmail account and use that email and password to sign in. Signing in to MSN takes around 10 seconds on my computer, which is efficient. Once signed in, your contacts will pop up whether they are displayed by status (Online/Offline) or in groups that you can make E.G. Work/School/Family/Best Friends/Random People. If you have windows live messenger, which is the latest PC version, then Windows Live Today will pop up. This small window is useful as it shows your local weather, the news and more gossip.

To talk to your contacts, you simply double click their name on your list and type in the box at the bottom of the chat window and press enter or click 'send' to send the message. It instantly pops up on their screen so they can reply. To add contacts, you navigate to the 'Add Contact' logo represented as a + sign at the top. Enter their address here, and it will send them a request. In the conversation window, you can change your display picture by uploading ones from your computer, change your writing font, colour and style as well as the text size. With later versions off msn, you can send nudges, which shake the victim's chat window and brings it to the front if they are on the msn application rather than the internet, otherwise they will just hear the nudge sound alert. From the chat window, you can also select emotions/smiles to send them to your contact. They can display a wide range of emotions such as happy, sad, crying, angry, annoyed, sarcastic, thinking, tired, sick, geek, big smile and more including ones like a car, aeroplane, present, cake, love heart, broken love heart, dog, cat, turtle, sheep, moon, star, sun, rainbow and even more. You can also add your own custom emotions which people send, by right clicking them and pressing add. You can assign shortcuts to them, such as (L) would come out as a love heart and you can send this, rather than clicking it which is slower. You must have different shortcuts for each custom emotion so they don't clash with default shortcuts or others. Winks can also be used, which are bigger in the way they pop out the chat window and make noises and move. They are done by some form of flash I imagine, and there are a range of these you can download and add too. They can send messages such as 'I love you' with a shiny sparkling heart and a sparkling sound in the background.

More features other than just instant messaging your friends include starting video calls, where you can view your contact if they have a webcam and vice versa. Also there are a variety of games on windows live messenger that you can play such as chess, minesweepers, monster battle, quizzes, Brain battle, 7 Hand Poker and many more that are recently updated. New ones are added all the time. The game opens at the side of the chat window after enlarging it; it will load and then begin. Sometimes they don't work, but most of the time they work fine with me. You can also do audio calls if you have a microphone. Similar to the video calls, you can speak to each other and the other person can be heard through your computer. You can add contacts from the chat window as well as block contacts in that conversation. This means they will not be able to see whether you are online or not, and you will always appear offline. Furthermore, you can delete contacts if they are really annoying or if you have fallen out, so that they are no longer on your list anymore, blocking them at the same time.

You can personalize your screen name as well as personal message and display picture. Your screen name is your main tag that will be shown to contacts when you sign in E.G. if your screen name is 'John', then it will say 'John has just signed in' to your other contacts if you sign in. You can make the screen name quite long and put anything in it really. NOTE: MSN is totally private meaning your conversations cannot be viewed by anyone else, and they are not logged, but you can choose to save them yourself. Your personal message is something more for you that you don't necessarily want everyone to see or understand, but they will be able to see it. You can also choose if you want your contacts to be able to see what you are listening to (music-wise) on iTunes or any other music player you have running. Your display picture has to be saved on your computer, so that you can upload it. This will appear by your name and in chat windows, whether it is a picture of something you like or one of yourself or you and friends, it is quite cool to have.

Alerts notify you whether a new instant message has been received or you have received a new email (on the account you are logged into of course). These alert sounds can be changed, or they can be turned off totally, but they are recommended or your contact will sit there for ages waiting for you to reply because you haven't realised they sent you a message! Other alerts include if a new contact has just signed in and when a new email has been received.

Overall, MSN is great because it is fast, easy to use and totally free. It has to be the most popular IM service used in the UK and most people have an MSN account whether they use it frequently or not. With the ability to change your status such as to 'away', 'be right back', 'out to lunch' and 'busy' you can stay online all the time if you want and just change your status accordingly. You also have the option to appear offline if you are not in the mood of speaking with anyone in particular. I would highly recommend you try out msn, as it is completely free and really handy for chatting instantly with your friends and family!

Thanks for reading, rating and commenting.

- Recon -

Summary: This is the most popular instant messaging programme in the UK so be a part of it!

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