Windows Live Messenger remains an important player on the market and the new generation MSN Messenger follows the same trend as its competitors to include all kinds of communication features, such as video chatting, file transfer and phone calling.
An important step towards unifying the means of online communication has been made and Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger are now interconnected. This allows users of the two to chat no matter the application they're using.
Unlike Yahoo's software though, Microsoft's displays the webcam right into the conversation window, thus allowing users to enjoy a better chatting experience. During our test, this camera-related feature worked flawlessly.
Another useful characteristic of this application is the ability to link other services you use, like Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace. This way, anyone can check out new posts from their friends within the same interface.
Sharing photos and other files is now easier with the new Windows Live Messenger. Users can easily create so-called 'Sharing Folders' and use them for sending files to somebody else via the popular drag-and-drop method.
The interface remains friendly and intuitive and users shouldn't encounter too many problems browsing through menus and settings. Advertisement banners are, nonetheless, shown at the bottom of the main window and, unfortunately, there's no way to get rid of them.
All things considered, it's safe to say that Windows Live Messenger is an easy to use application to chat over the Internet that does exactly what the name suggests and packs advanced features under a pleasant interface.
What's New in This Release:
Animated GIFs and emoticons are turned off in software mode:
· If your PC uses software rendering instead of hardware rendering, you won't see any animations in Windows Essentials 2012.
· This includes animated GIFs used in display pictures and animated emoticons in Messenger.
Movie Maker and Photo Gallery must be installed together:
· Windows Movie Maker and Windows Photo Gallery can only be installed together because they share many features. That means that if you have an earlier version of either Movie Maker or Photo Gallery installed on your PC, you'll have both programs installed after you upgrade to the new versions.
Microsoft SkyDrive installed in place of Windows Live Mesh:
· If you have Windows Live Mesh installed, it's automatically removed when you install Windows Essentials 2012, and Microsoft SkyDrive will be installed in its place. To sync everything that's on your SkyDrive to all your PCs, and even on a Mac, you'll need to install SkyDrive on each computer.
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Users are advised to pay attention while installing this ad-supported application:
· Displays ad banners or other types of advertising material during its runtime