Meet, hannahf, your messenger buddy… (Microsoft MSN Messenger Service)

Member Name: hannahf

Product:	Microsoft MSN Messenger Service
Date:	16/01/01 (3341 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great chat service, lots of features...

Disadvantages: look below...

> = Updated...

I have had MSN messenger since the summer, which was just before it was ‘updated’ to make it fiercer against the competition of the other messenger services, for example Yahoo! Messenger and AOL messenger. I have had Yahoo! Messenger, and personally I think MSN messenger service is far, far better than all the others around!

I’m really writing this opinion to tell you about messenger, so I’ll start off by telling you how to download it as there’s no point in you really reading this opinion if you don’t have, or don’t know how to get it.
There are really three ways to get the messenger service, but to download/use it you must have either a hotmail account, or a MSN passport. After you’ve got hotmail, you can either stay in your email account and download messenger from there, by using the options > messenger buddies link, or you can go to the MSN homepage and find the link from there. Yeah, I know, that’s only two, but the third can only happen if you have a friend who has MSN messenger. If they add your hotmail address to their list (I’ll explain later) they can send you an email that has links to download messenger from. On all three of these choices there are simple instructions and I assume that they all take around the same amount of time to download, which isn’t very long.

So, when you’ve finished downloading, you can open messenger on your screen. A little green and white icon should have appeared by your clock (on the computer of course) and if you double click on that you can sign into messenger.

Simple.

Usually, when you sign in, if you have emails in your account then a little sign will come up on your computer saying something like ‘2 emails in your hotmail inbox.’ This is a link to your hotmail account, so if you click on it, another window will come onto your screen.

If you click on the right hand
side of the mouse on the little messenger icon, you can access both your hotmail account and the MSN homepage.

However, the first thing you will probably want to do is add some friends to your list. As I said, I would explain. The ‘list’ is basically a list. Yes, a list of all the people you add onto your MSN messenger service. You will be able to find out who is online, so you can chat, and who is offline. Unfortunately, you are limited to the number of people you are allowed on your list, but unless you have over 100 friends with messenger, then I wouldn’t worry.
When a person signs into their messenger, a little notification comes up ‘XY has signed in’ with a sound. If you want, you can change the sound, depending what is on your computer.

When you’ve added your friends, you may want to change your display name; you do this by using the ‘edit’ toolbar, and then options. You change your name to whatever you want (it usually starts of as something like xy@hotmail.com) but beware, if you try to put something in like ‘HELP’ you’re not allowed. From using the options tool, you can also publish your phone numbers, work, home and Mobile.

That is, if you’re stupid enough.
So, you want to know how to chat then? It’s easy, once your friend/s is/are online, double click on there name and a chat box thing will come up. It’s pretty obvious how to chat, just by typing in what you want to say, as in a normal chat room. This one though, is not only a simple write – to – chat, chat room if you don’t want it to be. You can also, if you have a microphone, voice chat. You wait for your friend to accept your proposition of a voice chat, and talk away. Usually, it’s as clear as can be.

Oh yeah, I missed something out, the all important ‘how do you get those little picture thingies?’ question. So, instead of boring your &#
8216;messenger expert’ friend’s socks off, I will tell you.

What you have to do is quite clear really. You put a letter into the computer, with a bracket either side. For example (L) this (L) would then turn into a love heart, or if you replaced the L with a K you would get a pair of lips, and so on.

Also in this little chat box, you can send files to your friends. They can be in any format, and they can be anything, photographs, text files, etc. This is a big advantage that I’ve found with messenger. Instead of copying everything onto a floppy disc and then giving it to them in person, you can do this, and find it’s a lot, lot simpler.

> You can also talk to more than one person in a conversation, by adding friends who are online to your conversation. Unfortuantley, this is limited to seven or eight people.

Oh yes, did I mention you don’t have to be stuck with boring old Times New Roman, black coloured font, you can change it to anything you want…providing it’s available!

With messenger (and hotmail) you can make a profile for yourself online. Giving basic information (you don’t have to fill in every field) such as your name, nickname, favourite saying etc. This is a great feature, you don’t necessarily have to embarrass yourself, as of course, friends can read it, but if they can read yours, you can read theirs, and it is really a good laugh to see what they say they look like, or say their favourite saying that has never actually passed through their lips is.

Also, I’ll mention, there’s a small search engine part at the bottom of messenger, where you can type in a word and a window will appear on your screen, which will eventually take you to msn.com, and it will have the search results, as if you were using the website.

There are a few things that messenger could do with having, I think that if anyone could have it, hotmail passport
or not, it would make it easier, as it takes ages to find a decent user name that no – one else has. It could also update some of its features, or have a few more, like giving a web – cam facility, or something like that. Otherwise, it’s great.

I think that’s about it, I’ll try to keep you updated, if you find this useful, but basically I recommend this to any of you that don’t have it yet, I suspect you would be a very small part of the population.

Honestly, it’s just one of those rules in life, like not chewing the end of a biro that isn’t yours, or not eating something that fell in cow muck or…YOU MUST GET IT!

(HF15/1/01)

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