Who guessed it would
happen? Probably many Internet communicators did. At long last,
Microsoft couldn't help themselves. They had to have a slice of the
instant messaging market, which is now quite large with many
competitors joining in: Yahoo! Pager, AOL (Once Mirabillis) ICQ, AOL
Instant Messenger - just to name a few. Now we also have MSN
Messenger, a very similar "web pager" to AOLs.
As with many of the Microsoft products nowadays, MSN
Messenger provides a seamless integration with other parts of the
Microsoft operating systems. Messenger works well with NetMeeting,
Outlook Express, Internet Explorer, and Dial-Up Networking. The
integration allows these applications to use MSN Messenger's features
in their own particular way.
A strong point about MSN Messenger is
that it is a very small application. The download file only takes up
less than 400KB of hard disk space. This is much better than much of
the "bloatware" we see around with most of the web pagers. ICQ for an
example now takes up at least 4MB of hard disk space, plus another
10MB or so should be saved for its' "extras". The extra features in
the program makes ICQ take 30 seconds to load up. Unlike ICQ, MSN
Messenger takes little over a third of that. Also different to ICQ is
the fact that you need to have or register for a MSN Hotmail account
before using the software.
One of the most annoying things about MSN Messenger,
which I'll call a problem, is the fact that it almost every day you
log on to 'MSN Messenger, it prompts you to update the software with a
newer version, available from Microsoft. Though it does give you an
option to not download the update, it is a very annoying message box
that comes up - if this continues, many could be put off by this
enforcement.
Another problem which is at the time of typing is in
discussion with AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo! are the protocols
(standards) of chat-room compatibility. Microsoft and Yahoo! have been
trying to make their messenger programs compatible with AOL's, but
with little success. At the moment, this forces users to possibly have
multiple chat programs on their own computer.
Whilst all of the messenger programs have almost the
common features, it is most likely Microsoft will eventually come out
in front with a killer app that will leave the rest of the pagers
behind, with the exception of ICQ perhaps. With Microsoft's operating
systems offering more and more features (you'll probably see them in
Windows 2000) there is no doubt that future versions of MSN Messenger
will be further advanced in the field of instant messaging.
