Windows Live Messenger

Microsoft's updated IM client reflects the company's rebranding of its many free tools with the Windows Live label. The new MSN Messenger is now called Windows Live Messenger. While largely the same as its predecessor, Windows Live Messenger is unique for allowing you to share folders and files locally with fellow users. It also serves up the usual animated emoticons, winks, and buzzes, along with multiplayer gaming, free PC-to-PC calling, mobile phone messaging, and video chatting. Plus it adds VoIP capabilities that allow you to call telephones around the world for a fee. One major omission, though, is the ability to receive inbound calls from landlines or cell phones, a service that Yahoo Messenger with Voice offers. Overall, we recommend Windows Live Messenger's video chat over other IM tools'. You can access this app at get.live.com/messenger/overview.

For the first time, you can add contacts outside of the Windows Live or MSN network. Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Live Messenger now allow you to chat via text with buddies who use either tool. We clicked the Add A Contact link within Windows Live Messenger to add a Yahoo-using friend to our contact list in a few quick steps. To do so in the past, you'd have to use a tool such as Trillian.

This 14MB download took just a few minutes in our tests, though we had to proceed with care to prevent Windows Live Messenger from installing unwanted items, such as a desktop shortcut or Rhapsody music software. Once installed, Windows Live Messenger displays a drop-down menu of features along the top, contacts within the center pane, a search box on the bottom, and tabs for eBay, Rhapsody, and other services along the left. Microsoft fans will like the integration with MSN Spaces and the company's other properties. However, we wish we could hide the animated panel of ads at the bottom.

The chat window is customizable, so you can pick a color scheme or choose from themes and paid avatars, most of which cater to kids and tweens. See more details of the changes in our slide show of Windows Live Messenger beta. If you don't need the graphics bells and whistles of this tool and those of the similar Yahoo Messenger with Voice or AIM, we recommend the bare-bones Google Talk.

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