Yesterday when i signed on to MSN, i got a message saying a new version is available, so i downloaded it and went ahead with the installation of Windows Messenger Live.

Worst mistake ever.

When i loaded WML, i noticed that the background in conversation windows had vanished, i then noticed that all of the custom emotes and display pictures had also gone. I was a little pissed off to say the least, but luckily i knew where MSN kept the files on my hard drive, and i also had the original image for some of the emotes and display pictures i made.

I started to re-add some of the emotes and display pictures, when i noticed that WML seems to handle the transparency of the emote images differently. Where there was nothing, was now pinkish purple, or whatever color i had used for that files transparency color. This wasn't a small amount of them either, it was around 90% of the ones that i had added up to that point.

So, i stopped adding of emotes, and re-added the background i use, what was once a nice image of a beach and looked really nice in MSN, looked really ugly in WML. I don't know if it was the two huge bars across the top of the conversation windows, or the color i had chosen. The background certainly lost its appeal and was removed to show a plain white background color... which i couldn't change to something less blinding. So i decided to give it up and move on to removing all of the clutter than WML has by using a-patch and Live Plus!. At least something worked right.. well, thats what i thought anyway.

It wasn't until i was talking to a friend a few hours later asking him if he uses WML and explaining the issues with emotes etc. That i realized that i could not view the oversized emotes he was sending me without WML shrinking them down.

I had forgotten to install StuffPlug-Ng, which is a really nice plugin for Plus! I guess it has changed a lot since the version i used on MSN, but it now seems to be totally separate of Plus! It had now added its own icon to the top of WML and a menu, which i instantly hated.

To top it off, the version of StuffPlug-Ng i was using was also lacking about 90% of the features from its previous version, including the option i installed it for in the first place. Oversized emotes.

*sigh*

I'd had enough at this point and went about uninstalling and reverting back to MSN. Finding MSN 7.5, Plus!, a-patch and StuffPlug-Ng was also a task in its own, with a lot of googling version numbers provided by my friend. I even ended up on a Chinese website, having to guess which link was the one to download a-patch because its homepage refused to let me get it from there.

Once i had installed and patched things back to how they were, i was happy to find that MSN had also picked up my custom emotes, background, and display pictures from before this whole thing started. That was a huge relief.

So, i guess until Microsoft pulls the plug on supporting MSN's protocol, i'll be sticking with it for a long time... or at least until i know that i won't have to go through all of this again.

Ain't had a single problem with it here, kept all my custom bits fine, and I'm glad it shrinks down large emoticons.  While I was using GAIM I got sick of the stupidly large custom animated emoticons friends kept sending me.  WLM and MESS perfect for me.

Interesting, maybe it was a mix of my system configuration, patching, and using Plus!.

The only thing i did like about WML is being able to talk to people while in "appear offline" status.

I went from Hotmail to Windows Mail: what a bad idea. The they coded it made it impossible to hit the browser's "Previous" button to go back normally. There were several issues that I wasn't pleased with. I wrote a large review of the piece of crap when I switched back to Hotmail; the folks at MS have yet to respond.

I'm currently using WLM. For some reason, I haven't had any of the problems you mentioned. Over sized emoticons appear fine (no shrinking) and my own were kept. I'm using it with Plus! My only complains are that sometimes my contacts appear offline in the tabs while they are online, and loading the application takes much more time.

I've heard many horror stories about MSN Live, and this further convinces me about why I should avoid it.



Thanks

All these bugs and hassles got me to quit using IM altogether (for a while). Until yesterday, that is, when I found Meebo. Good, simple stuff.