MSNerdometer! (Microsoft MSN Messenger Service)

Member Name: Technical Tobes

Product:	Microsoft MSN Messenger Service
Date:	01/11/00 (125 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quick & easy to use. Can have a voice conversation.

Disadvantages: Your friends will always know when your online!

MSN Messenger is one of a number and one of the best ‘instant messaging’ programs available.

What does it do?
What this allows you to do is talk with your friends instantly whenever they are online. This can be done by either typing or literally talking (obviously you’ll need speakers & a microphone to do that).


Key points… At a glance….

Good points:
- Small, quick & simple to use
- Have the option to ‘talk’ (i.e. voice!) across the net
- Can pretend your are not online – if you want privacy!
- Can block other people contacting you if you so wish.
- Can send files to one another
- Links to your hotmail (or msn etc) email account & alerts when new email arrives.

Bad points:
- Can’t set it to offline mode until it’s connected (and told all your friends your online).
- Voice calls suffer from slight delayed reaction (perfectly usable though).
- Can’t use all the ‘pager’ & ‘SMS mobile’ messaging options unless your in the US or Canada.
- Help file is web-based (annoying is you want ‘quick’ reference).
- Your friends will know if you become a net junky!!


In detail…

How to get it…
The software is easily downloadable via the Windows Update site & is only small so does not take long to download. To start using it, you’ll require a ‘passport’, this is basically a hotmail / msn email address. The wizard takes you through this & makes it very simple. A similar wizard makes it easy to inform your friends of the service & your details.

How it works…
When you have it up & going, you’ll get a little green man in your task tray. When you’re connected to the internet, MSN Messenger will automatically log in for you & inform any of your friends that are online that you have just logged on.

Whenever one of your friends log on, sends you a message or you receive an email, you get a little box pop-up & inform you.
By double-clicking on the little green man you can see a list of your friends & whether they’re on or offline. For all those online you can send an instant message, which, at first pops up in a little box & then turns into a big window.
What is good is that you can see when your friends are typing & you can easily add / remove other friends from the discussion.
You can even start a voice conversation over the net – but this only work for one person. It does work surprisingly well, despite a slight delay!
You can even send / receive files via messenger, which is handy.

And what if you want some privacy?!?…
Messenger has a neat option to set your online status to busy, out to lunch etc and, most useful ‘appear offline’. This means you can still see who is online, but they can’t see you! This can be very handy as sometimes your friends can get annoying – particularly if you’re trying to get something done. You can’t start a conversation when your appearing ‘offline’, you have to show yourself first (logical!).
You also have the ability to block people from contacting you, I haven’t had the need yet but it’s nice to know the ability is there!

Nice touches then…
To spice up your text conversations, you can use ‘emoticons’. These are little smiley faces, flowers etc in the form of icons, entering them is simple (e.g. :-) for a smiley face) but remembering them is not. You can also change your font (type, size & colour).

Any problems?
Only one problem I can foresee, the names you see in the Messenger window are set by your friend, you cannot change them, thus I’m wondering how you’ll work out who is who if you, say, have 3 friends called Fred!
Also, a really annoying thing is
that most of the extras services (sending SMS text messages to mobiles / pagers) are only available to those in the states / Canada – arrghh!
Oh, and of course, sometimes you don’t want all your friends to know that you’re surfing the net!!

Great product wouldn’t be without it now!

Thanks for reading,
Tobes

Summary: