MSN Messenger 7.5

...course, and oh yeah - MSN Messenger. So long phone calls and even goodbye mobile phone for text messaging, because now I found out it was able to contact people for free (minus the monthly internet subscription) using MSN Messenger, although most people just call it 'MSN'.

Call me stupid but I believe MSN is basically THE messenger service of the internet, made by Microsoft? I remember the first version of it, which would censor swearing ...
...that I use known as MSN Messenger 7.5. Even though there's probably better versions out there now, this is the one I'm most happy with using.

Now obviously how long the product takes to download is all down to the speed of your internet connection as is the same with all downloads, however no matter how long it's taking you - just be thankful that it's free, because it's something worth waiting to download. If you've got a really ... more

Allow me to start from the beginning. The first time I ever used a computer was when my eldest brother had saved up for months all to get the eyesore that now is one of the biggest computers you've ever seen. I always think that people who have never used a computer before probably believe they're like what you see in the movies, activiating nuclear arms machines, whilst really they're actually one of the most friendly pieces of electronic equipment in the house. Using my brothers computer for the first time, the only things I knew how to do was switch it on and play pinball. Slowly I would learn how to use Wordpad, then how to play Leisure Suit Larry, and well -- my abilities grew and grew until I discovered the internet.

For those who were lucky enough to never experience dial-up, how strange that is compared to Broadband. I was about 11 years old and discovering all the things you can do on the internet, whilst at the same time holding up my homes phone line and getting cut off every 2 hours. This discovering would make for learning about things that have only happened in American, porn of course, and oh yeah - MSN Messenger. So long phone calls and even goodbye mobile phone for text messaging, because now I found out it was able to contact people for free (minus the monthly internet subscription) using MSN Messenger, although most people just call it 'MSN'.

Call me stupid but I believe MSN is basically THE messenger service of the internet, made by Microsoft? I remember the first version of it, which would censor swearing and had non-moving smilies. Can you believe that? Not even animated! What a crazy world that was. I believe that very first version is now known as 'Windows Messenger', and comes pre-installed on every Windows computer. Over the years newer and newer versions have been released, and my favourite is now the current version that I use known as MSN Messenger 7.5. Even though there's probably better versions out there now, this is the one I'm most happy with using.

Now obviously how long the product takes to download is all down to the speed of your internet connection as is the same with all downloads, however no matter how long it's taking you - just be thankful that it's free, because it's something worth waiting to download. If you've got a really speedy connection I think it will probably only take less than a minute anyway. The installation process is really simple, so if you can install a game like Theme Hospital then you can definitly install MSN Messenger.

To sign-in to MSN you need an email address, and formerly this used to be @hotmail.com or @msn.com but since then a lot has changed. You can now seemingly have an MSN 'passport' even if your email address is @yahoo.com or @tesco.com etc. I don't know exactly how it works, but I know it does because my brother's email address is a Yahoo one and I can still speak to him on MSN, as well as having friends who have email addresses at different places and usually in brackets after their screen name, "Email address not verified," will follow. I don't know what that means, but no concern of mine.

If you're a Brit, like most of us here, MSN tends to give you a .co.uk address now, meaning you have more range of what you can have as the beginning part of your email address. That means if you want one of the old fashioned .com addresses, you're going to have to pretend your American. Does anyone really want a .com address that bad?

You can have MSN Messenger as an icon on your desktop, and that's what I have, although if you'd prefer you can just select it from the 'Start' menu. Obviously like anything you have the choice of making it full-screen, minimizing it or exiting it using the little symbols in top right hand corner. Using a little symbol of two arrows in the top left hand corner you can choose whether or not to have a boarder around your MSN. I choose to not have the boarder on because it looks nicer, and the options in the boarder I hardly ever use anyway.

Changing the size of your MSN windows is really easy, although I tend to find if you drag your MSN window too close to either the left or right side of your screen it will reshape to fit the length of the screen. Strange programming there, because it means I just have to edit is back again.

Anyway as soon as you open MSN you will notice the trademark light blue colours of the window. At the top in the centre is your 'display picture' - this picture can be selected from a range of MSN that offers (e.g. the plastic duck) or you can upload pictures from your own personal documents and have whatever you want as your picture. Whatever suits your personality really.

Below that you enter your email address, or if you have more than one person using MSN on your computer you can select your address from a drop-down menu. Below that is a space to enter your password, and just under that is a drop-down menu to choose what status you want to log-in under. The choices are; 'Online', 'Busy', 'Be Right Back', 'Away', 'On the Phone', 'Out to Lunch' and 'Appear Offline'. My personal favourite is the last one, as it allows me to log-in and see who's online before actually properly logging in, that means if there's someone on there I don't want to speak to - I don't have to.

You then have a few check boxes underneath this. 'Remember Me' means that the computer will remember your email address and preferred status. 'Remember my Password' does exactly as it says. Then under that is 'Sign me in automatically' and if you check that, everytime you turn on your computer you shall be signed straight in. The big button with 'Sign In' written on just below all this will sign you on to your MSN, providing all the information you've put in above is correct.

Before we move on to the actual service itself there's a couple of other things I need to tell you about on this screen. 'Forgot your password?' is a service for those that have forgotten their password, because we all know it happens to the best of us. 'Service Status' means you can check if MSN is working or down at the moment, but it's hardly ever down. And 'Get a new account' takes you a screen to make a new email address.

Stopclocks at the ready, I'm going to tell you how long it takes you to log-in typically. About the press the button... start your stopclock now... SIGNING IN... SIGNING IN... 6 SECONDS! Wow, that was fast. Sometimes it can take longer, but you can always tell if it's working or not by the way it slows down just before it signs you in.

Now you're in the screen is quite a bit different. At the top you have a smaller version of what your display picture is, as well as your screen name and your status, an extra bit of space to lengthen your screen name (or display what song you're listening to if you have iTunes or Windows Media Player, for all those music lovers) and then there are three other icons.

An envelope with a number in brackets following it, shows you how many unread emails you have. That's right, you never have to log-in to Hotmail again because by clicking that you can be taken straight to your email.

Then there's a picture of, well I'm not quite sure what it is. A cube? The text following it says 'My MSN Space' and this works like your profile and a mini-MySpace where you can show off pictures and blog. I don't find that many people really use it, and I personally don't.

The third and final symbol is the MSN multicoloured butterfly symbol followed by 'MSN Today'. This tells you the latest news, shows you what is going on at the MSN website and shows you your latest emails. I tend not to use this, and find that the email feature on it only works half the time.

Down the left hand side are a ton of different advertisements for things on the internet, and then at the very bottom of the screen is another horizontal advertisement. Just below that is a search field, to search for things on the internet.. can't say I've ever used that feature myself. I prefer Google. Then on the right hand side is a scroll bar to search through your CONTACTS!

Contacts are people you've added to your MSN Messenger, and you do this by clicking 'Add a Contact', enter their email and then like a magic trick they're there. That's if they accept they want to talk to you that is. If someone adds you, a little window will pop up asking you if you want to speak to this person or not.

The contacts are sorted alphabetically, although considering most people have things like '[' and '*' as the beginning of their screen names, it's more of a matter of work out what symbol comes first. That is why I prefer to group my contacts. It took me a while, but you can have as many groups as you want and name each of these groups. The typical ones are 'family' and 'friends', although I tend to group people by having the people I like the most in the groups highest up on my list. Means I have to do less scrolling.

Next to a persons screen name will be either a green little man or a red little man. The green man means that person is online, whilst the red one means they're offline. At the top of each catagorey it tells you how many people you've got online out of how many people you've got in that catagorey as well. As I mentioned you can group the catagoreys so you have the people you like best higher up on your list, although MSN does organise the catagoreys alphabetically. This means for the groups with my favourite people in, before the names of each catagorey I put the numbers 1-5.

If you see there is a picture next to someones name, that means they're online but they have opened a conversation with you. That picture you see next to their screen name is a tiny version of their display picture. If you double click on a contact with a red little man next to them, it will automatically take you to a screen to send an email to them. Although if you double click on a contact with a picture of a green little man, it will open up a conversation window with them.

And my, oh my, have I opened a can of worms here taking this review on. I tend to have all my conversations in full windows because that allows you to see more of the 'convo', although when I first started using MSN I had them all as tiny windows so I could see what different people were all saying at once. You'll find your preferred way of doing it.

Along the top of the convo window you are given options. You can invite people into the conversation, allowing you to speak to more than one person at a time. You can send your friend a file over the conversation. You can start a video or an audio conversation, allowing them to see you via webcam or speak to you over a microphone. There is also an option called 'Activities' with things like 'Whiteboard', but I've never risked using them and I tend to believe they're only a very tiny part of the MSN Messenger experience. The final big icon option along the top is 'Games', allowing you to games like 'Bejeweled' and 'Checkers' against friends online. Your records on this are kept in a little table, although I tend to find mine get deleted every so often! Outrageous.

Two other smaller icons on the top are a censored symbol over the picture of a person, this means you 'block' that contact and they can no longer speak to you, and you can't speak to them. A little paintbrush icon allows you to change the faint background colour of the conversation as well, although I've hardly experimented with this feature since the day I got it.

The convo window is also where you can see your friends display picture and they can see yours, that is unless you choose to hide your display pics.. a good feature if someone has something embarrassing as their display pic and you don't want someone who happens to be walking past to see it. You can also edit the size of the display pictures, although this only changes the way you see them - not the way your friends will see them.

Above where you type your messages to your friends are 7 different icons.

A - Allows you to change the font and colour of your writing, as well as the size it appears on your screen.

Smiley face - A selection of different images you can use in your conversations ranging from sad face to party face.

Speaker in a voice bubble - Allows you to record a sound clip to send to your friend.

Winking face - A selection of animated expressions you can send to your friends, including a big kiss.

Mountain picture - Allows you to change the background of your conversation, even letting you use your own pictures as backgrounds.

Present - Downloadable 'packs' that include emotions, backgrounds, etc.

Dazed face - Sends a nudge to your friend that sends sound to your friends computer as well as putting your conversation as top on their screen. Your friends can disable this if it annoys them though.

With the appearance of something as big as MSN Messenger, beating off rivals like AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo, there's bound to be extras released. One site specialises in these sort of extras and it is called Msgplus. Unlike some strange, virus filled, things you can find on the internet - Msgplus actually enhanced the MSN experience so much. Obviously it's not actually a part of the product I'm reviewing so I won't say too much, but it allows you to have extras like to say more in a conversation without reaching your character limit, have more colours of fonts and even have a feature almost like 'Paint' on your MSN. Something to look out for.

The options area of MSN Messenger is broken down into different subjects. Rather than going through them all and repeating some of the options I've already gone through, I'll just mention the ones I haven't.

PERSONAL - Has an option to set your status as 'Away' automatically if you're inactive for a changeable amount of minutes. As an option to show you as 'Busy' as well when you're running a full-screen program, and an option to hide the icon that shows whether or not you have webcam (think that option only works half the time).

GENERAL - Includes options to automatically load MSN when you turn your computer, which tends to slow down your computers start-up.

MESSAGES - Allows you to keep a history or 'Chat Logs' of your conversations, and choose where these are stored.

ALERTS AND SOUNDS - One of the most familiar things about MSN is the sounds it lets out, and here you can choose which sounds you want to hear and stop the ones you don't!

FILE TRANSFER - Where to save your received files.

PHONE - Add your phone numbers to MSN so people can contact you. Erm... no thanks.

TABS - These are the advertisements you see up and down the left side of your MSN, choose which ones you want and the ones you don't.

PRIVACY - A more posh look at the 'blocked' list.

SECURITY - Basically if you're scared of viruses, you can put a stronger barrier up from people sending you dodgey things here.

CONNECTION - The troubleshooter and takes a look at your connection to the MSN service.

The help services are just as useful as any, where if you've got a simple problem it's hard to fix, and if you've got a complex problem it is impossible to fix. You just have to look through and hope for the best, before putting yourself in a queue to speak to the kind people at MSN. Luckily my problems have usually fixed themselves overtime, because I don't know what I'd do without MSN. Not only is it a great way to talk to people about interests and what they're doing that night, I've also had confrontations with people over MSN. In this age of cyber bullying, I'm sure that MSN plays a part as well. As usual, if your child is using the service you have to be careful who they're talking to. I was using MSN Messenger when I was 11 and I never spoke to any crooks luckily, and my parents know absolutely nothing about internet security except there's some horrible people out there. For adults I'm sure it's fine, although when you're older I doubt you'll use it as much as teenagers do. It is really easy to use whoever you are, and has a very modern design to appeal to everybody. Still, definitly worth downloading as afterall - it's a way to keep in contact with people free of charge! It truly is instant messaging, as messages are sent instantly and it is on very rare occassions that you find you get told your message could not be received or that the network is down.  

...less