I’ve been using Windows Live Messenger 9 for at least a year now. At the end of 2007, one of the beta builds got leaked on the internet and I was quick to snap it up and use it as my main IM client for Windows Live messenger. Although for most of that time, it was the same old build that had a few of the new upcoming features to Windows Live Messenger. Well two months ago, a new build got released in public beta as part of the Windows Live Wave 3.

At first when I installed the build, I only used it for at least 15-30 minutes before uninstalling it and going back to the old beta build. This wasn’t because I didn’t like it or I had problems with it, the reason was because I need Messenger Plus! Live with Windows Live Messenger. Without it, I am missing some of those extra features that make my IM experience great! It wasn’t soon after that till I was forced to upgrade, and without MP!L ready for it, I downgraded back to WLM 8.5. There is little difference between the beta 0 build that I had and WLM 8.5. Eventually Patchou released a public beta build of Messenger Plus! Live that supported Windows Live Messenger 2009.

Upgrading from 8.5 to 2009 is a huge jump. The first thing that becomes apparent is the contacts window. The has 2 additions to it, those being Favourites and Groups. In favourites, you have your favourite contacts at the top of your contacts window at all times. This makes it easier for finding and those important contacts that you want to talk to, without searching through your large contacts list of in all your categories. I personally don’t use this feature and ended up disabling it because I already have a tier like contacts list using categories. There contacts are always at the top of my contacts list so I felt that this feature wasn’t necessary for me. Although in saying that, our group of favourites can be made more distinctive by making their display pictures a different size from your regular contacts.

That is another change in WLM 2009. Instead of seeing the little green men with the status beside them, this has been replaced by a little square dot. You do have the option to change this to a bigger size, ranging from the small dot to larger squares displaying contacts images. These squares changes colour depending on the status of the contact, or if you are showing the display picture the ream of the square. While on the topic of status, the team have decided to strip all those unnecessary nonsense status and have kept it to 4 simple status, available, busy, away and appear offline. These are the most important ones and are the ones most people probably use. I can’t remember the last time I have use any of the other ones that are in WLM 8.5.

When going into a conversation window, the first change becomes apparent. The conversation area and the display picture area have been switched around. The display pictures are on the left side of the conversation windows now. This is very unusual to start off with but you soon adjust to it. The display pictures also have similar properties to the ones in the contacts window. The square rim around the display picture of you and your contact changes colour depending on status. If your contact is online, it will be green, busy then red, away then orange and offline (or appearing offline) it has no colour and is faded. This is a very helpful and cleaver of seeing your contacts status while having a conversation with them.

The last big feature of WLM 2009 that I am excited about is the Multiple Points of Presence. This is more of a backend feature that one specific to the software. What this does is allows you to sign in to WLM from multiple locations at once, without signing out of one of your other places. There are many good ways this feature could be used, for example signing in on 2 machines in different locations, or if you’re using 2 machines at once. This feature could later on expand to other messenger services such as Xbox 360, Windows Live Web Messenger, Mac Messenger, Windows Messenger on Windows Mobile and so on. When you are signed on in two locations, message sent and received will be sent to both locations so you don’t have to worry about not getting the message when you’re on one machine or another. You can also sign out other locations right from your one if you must. I found this feature useful for me when I was logged onto a remote machine. It allowed me to message people without minimising my remote desktop or logging out of the WLM on my main machine. I did however come across issues with this, for example at times messages only went to one location (rare occurrence) and when logging off from one place closed the conversation windows from another place. Once they fix this up, it’ll be all good!

There are a few other features that I didn’t cover such as groups and scenes. I haven’t really played around with groups because I don’t have many contacts using WLM 2009. I have had a quick look at scenes and all this really does it change the look of your main contacts window and the conversation window on your contacts computer for you. If they have a scene, it will be shown on your conversation window and this will change everytime they change scenes. Other than that, I think I’ve pretty much covered most of the major new stuff in the upcoming Windows Live Messenger 2009. This is going to be a great release!

Related posts:

1. Playing In A Puddle
2. My Windows Applications
3. The Live Mesh
4. Playing With Windows 7
5. Aggregating