After using Windows Live Wave 4 for a month, I've discovered a product with groundbreaking features, as well as annoyances. Windows Live Messenger Wave 4 is a huge improvement over it's predecessor, finally offering the promised Windows 7 integration. The Wave 4 version of Messenger is the first major update since Wave 3 was released back in 2008.
This article offers a review of end user use of Windows Live Messenger: Wave 4, showing what the software is capable of and where it falls down.
First Impressions:
The new Messenger starts up in a new, larger window, which is aimed at higher resolution screens. The layout is much improved over older versions, and integrates with Windows 7's style well:
After signing in, you are presented with the new oversized version of your contact list, that actually integrates Facebook, Twitter and other services into one place. Again, this is really intended for high resolution screens -- the computer I'm using only has a 17" display, and Messenger almost fills up the entire screen.
One of first things you notice upon sign in, is that the annoying "custom display names" are missing from your friends list, and are instead replaced with the users' full name.
Layouts:
There is now an additional layout you can choose from, expanded view (as shown above) or default view, which is the original, one column window. It's worth noting that the ads actually get larger in expanded view, and can even overflow out of the box.
As a further addition to layouts, the contact list adapts when expanded and rearranges them into multiple columns. This is to cater for high resolution displays.
Conversations & Tabbed Windows:
Messenger offers large improvements during chat -- the largest of which has been available in MsgPlus! for a while now -- Tabs are now fully integrated with the conversation windows to help you keep them organised. You can also flick through them quickly using Aero Peek, similar to the fashion in IE8.
Even though this feature is handy, it doesn't seem well implemented. You would expect that the tab behavior would be similar to that of a browser, but when you middle click on a tab, nothing happens. The correct, expected behavior is for the tab to close, as in Internet Explorer and other browsers. In addition to this, when the tabs flash with notifications, sometimes they do not clear correctly, and when you navigate away from them, it tells you there's a new message even though it's already been read.
Sharing Improvements:
There are new improvments also in the area of sharing with Messenger able to automatically recognise some links -- including Youtube and other video sites -- and display them in an integrated player which is designed to save you opening your browser. Appropriately, I sent a video of "Old Spice" to my friend to watch.
Other Features:
In addition, there are a few other features which aren't huge, but definitely noticeable.
Notifications have been updated to be larger, but fit better into the Windows 7 experience.
Messenger also integrates your Facebook contacts now (into a sub-category called 'Facebook'), and shows you which of your Facebook friends are online. Oddly enough, the feature doesn't actually allow you to use Facebook chat, but actually just matches your Facebook friends' email addresses to your MSN friends' ones, so you can chat to them there. This is a disappointment and seems quite lazy on the Windows Live Team's part.
Annoyances
1) The new features included are handy, but some components of Messenger seem to have regressed on previous features. In the older Windows Live Wave 3 version of Messenger, if you closed your contact list, a handy contact icon would stay open in the tray, with your display picture in it to let you know you're still signed in. This meant that you had a kind of "invisible" window open so that you stayed signed in. In the latest version, this feature is gone, and now when you try to close Messenger, it just minimises to the taskbar -- annoying because now the contact list pollutes the ALT+TAB switcher, and if the list is actually "closed", the client signs out.
2) You would also think that the Facebook integration in the contact list is able to be disabled -- this apparently is not the case -- as once it is turned on, you can't remove the "Facebook" category from the list anymore.
3) In conversation windows, text ads were normal, but these have also been paired up with more intrusive flash ads now as well. You can close them, but it's rather annoying, as they appear every time you start a new chat. They seem quite unrelated and not relative to what is happening in the window -- it's suggesting I search for dating when talking to Steve?
4) I had huge issues actually getting the "auto-sharing" feature to work. I tried sending the "old spice" video to a friend, and was told I needed to install Adobe Flash. I closed Messenger, installed it, restarted, and was presented with the install window again. I couldn't actually successfully get the feature to work. Additionally, the feature only seems to work sporatically, and it is not possible to disable it. If you're sending lots of Youtube links, it's probably best to find another way.
5) Finally, there seem to be issues around adding new contacts and seeing other contacts online. Sometimes users you have added and are actually online are seen as offline, or you never receive a notification from a friend who has just added you asking if you want to add them back. There's no workaround for this other than repetitively signing in and out until it starts working again.
Final Thoughts:
It is expected from a beta build that there would be issues, and the Wave 4 Messenger product is coming along very nicely so far. Based on experience with the client, I would definately reccomend this as an update from the older version, even with the issues that it currently has. The update has been a long time coming, and is a well needed one to bring the client up to date with Windows 7.
You can download the Messenger Wave 4 update, along with other Windows Live Wave 4 programs such as Mail and Movie Maker at the Windows Live Preview website.
Update: Commenters point out that over on the Windows Team blog, they say that "as part of our deeper integration with Facebook, later this year Messenger will support Facebook Chat", which would explain the current lack of Facebook Chat.
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