A free service but with a couple of niggles (Microsoft MSN Messenger Service)

Member Name: experimental

Product:	Microsoft MSN Messenger Service
Date:	26/03/09 (141 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free, Easy to use, Keep in contact easily, Block!

Disadvantages: Can be unreliable, sponsors, chance of viruses spreading quickly

Msn Messenger is one of the most well known messengers out there are it has a lot of features missing from other messenger, in my opinion. If you have an email account with Hotmail then you can use it straight away with no problems - it can also now accept email addresses outwith hotmail but when I tried it seemed a bit more complicated and continued to use my hotmail address so I could have all of the latest features.

You can download msn messenger from their website or various others from the internet and download speed varies greatly depending on your internet connection. Mine took around 5 minutes but my sisters took closer to 10. It was easy with a click of a button and installation only takes a couple of minutes and doesn't require a reboot to use. Msn have recently released a new version of msn and I have to say I hated it so much that I went back to a previous version (save the setup file and you can pretty much have any version you want). The new design uses colours to show whether you've available, busy or away and it might be very simple to those who have been using it for a while - but definitely not at first.

So what is msn and what can it do?

Msn messenger is simply a messenger that runs on your navigation bar at the bottom and it allows you to communicate with anyone you add to it. For example, I live over 500 miles away from my family and phone calls aren't always cheap so I often use messenger to catch up with them and find all the news etc. No, it isn't as good as speaking in person, but it's free and mostly easy to use. It's also a very quick way to check your emails as it will alert you when you receive a new email or when a new contact comes online. But don't worry - if you're at work and don't want everyone to see you're not exactly working, you can turn it off. The option of a sound playing when a contact logs on or an email comes through is also available through your options menu and I think the default is actually to have it on.

You can change the name you use at the top by just a simple click and typing in whatever you want. This can be extremely annoying because if someone changes their name every day, you have to look and see it is when they come online instead of seeing who it is straight away. I do like it though as it gives people their own sense of personality and allows people to tell their news quickly. There is also a space to let others know what you're doing or what you're listening to right now. I've never used these so I can't really comment on that side of it, but I know when you do use the music feature that a clicky link becomes available to other users on your msn so they can listen along too.

One of the best parts of messenger is the ability to block users that you don't know who they are or that you no longer wish to talk to. I used to share a computer where msn would share contacts from my list and my friends list so we were constantly getting people we didn't know speaking away to us and demanding to know how we had gotten their email address. This was very annoying and block was the most efficient way for us to block it out! You can access all of your contacts by going to tools, options and privacy and you can easily manage who is blocked and which contacts can see you - ie only contacts on your list are allowed to see your online status.

I do like the fact that msn messenger allows you to turn on and off certain features as it gives us all a bit more flexibility and control over what we want to do.

However, I don't like the constant advertisements that slow your computer down and the tabs down the left advertising their sponsors can be an annoyance. I don't know how many times I have accidently clicked the link at the bottom of an msn screen as I was switching back to that window. Very annoying!

Msn messenger is also renowned for allowing viruses across and they can spread very very quickly throughout your contacts so be warned! Yes, they block out certain file transfers but this doesn't mean that one can't find it's way to you easily - it's for this reason I don't accept files over msn and if I really need the file, I virus scan it as soon as it hits my PC.

My other little niggle is reliability. Msn messenger seems to have a lot of down time and it will randomly boot me off mid way through a conversation! This gets very annoying and I've been turning to facebook messenger in recent weeks as it seems a lot more reliable for me.

Overall? A great little free service that allows you to stay in contact with those miles away for free and you can speak to them when you want, rather than answering that phone and being stuck on it for days with them yapping away! (Only got sisters lol). The reliability is something that regularly annoys me so if you get easily frustrated, this messenger probably isn't for you!

Summary: A good service that could be better.

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