http://www.osnews.com/story/9413/MSN_Messenger_7_consolidating_Windows_lock-in_strategy_ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2012, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:11:14 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? msn messenger? oh god! please no... Sat, 15 Jan 2005 04:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Messenger is overbloated? And your over-winded. It's evil because the source isn't included? Dumb-ass, get over it. What are you going to do with the source, screw it up and them blame it on Microsoft? You can't program. Messenger ties you to Microsoft? Use one of the other hundred programs available, stupid shit. Nobody has a gun to your head. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 04:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? This has got to be a new low for articles posted here. For a second I thought I was reading someone's angry LiveJournal entry until it occured to me their servers were down. I suppose this is what this page's audiance wants now.

Also: 'Nudge' was in Y! Messenger for ages, too. You failed to bag on Microsoft on that while you had a chance. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 04:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Nudge well that is the most useless feature in time... well apart from cammras on phones. Note anyone that works with sensitive matter will be banned from taking the phone to work.

And what about those POINTLESS tabs on the side pitty you cant turn them off. Why use open source? Why fill bug reports?? Why botther telling Microsoft about a vunribility when they will only ask for money for support (note this happend to me with SP1 and Msn 4.7).

You forgot to mention all the DRM bloating the OS. I am sorry if I sound heated but why is our good money going into development of nudges and useless tabs when that money is better spent on FIXing bugs and exploits. Its a mine field out there and they are still swinging in the playground. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 04:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm not sure exactly how popular MSN messenger is in Europe but in America it doesn't seem very popular. I've never come accross someone who said, "Hey, do you have an MSN Messenger name?" More often then not I hear, "Do you have AIM?"

As for full page flash sequences, I'm not even sure if that is something that can be implemented in Gaim or Kopete. As far as file transfer and direct IM images in Gaim (which I use), I've had little problems once I've set up my router correctly.

As far as asthetics, MSN messenger may have fancy skins but Gaim on my computer is not ugly. I believe on Windows it is pretty limited in looks because the GTK toolkit isn't very themeable in that environment. The interface, however, isn't horrible. It isn't the best but it sure beats AIM.

Overall this article seemed to not stay on topic. It talks of MSN messenger then jumps to how lack of hot applications keeps users away from Linux and other open source operating systems. Yes, we all know Linux needs some kind of Flash MX or Photoshop equivalent, and as long as there is demand someone will eventually try to fill that gap. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Does anyone who matters use MSN Messenger or even MSN? I think I encounter an MSN e-mail address or URL a few times a year, at best. Perhaps this is because Microsoft is a very very small part of my life. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? /me pets BeOS' IMKit
http://www.eiman.tv/imkit/index.html Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? i dont understand this artical at all, it bashes MSN for being good at connecting to its OWN service, and bashes other free alts, at being not as good, this guy is gold!!! i'd hold on to him for being award winning. heck, ya know what, give me another write up when someone says openoffice isnt as good as MS office and BLAMES MS for being so good at what they do. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? MSN Messenger is extremely popular in asian or latin american countries, or places with low resources where most internet users connect from a cyber-bar. This is because in most cases, such messenger already comes integrated to windows. The OS is locked there (means you cant install apps on it) and msn is the easier/friendlier alternative as it comes very deeply integrated to windows.

Another thing i've noticed with MSN is that "just works". Even if i only have used linux clients, it by far works much better than yahoo or AIM, and not even mention ICQ.
yahoo is a lot more bloated than MSN andchanges protocol all the time.. ICQ sometimes just doesnt send messages, or gives you problems logging in, and AIM simply lets me login but never shows me when other users are connected.

So basically, even if I use Linux, MSN Messenger is the only real choice I have. It works best, and it's what everyone here uses. Yet, I know that if they ever change protocol or something and force updates, I'll be royally screwed. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? An interesting article, and I agree with a good number of the points presented. I'm currently using an XP / Gentoo dualboot, and for all my IM'ing purposes I actually prefer using Gaim to the bloat of even MSN6. Features such as logging, away messages and hyperlinking are far more developed in Gaim than in MSN6, and I feel that with a correct shift of focus towards the other "indispensable" novelty features, Gaim could easily be the Firefox or OpenOffice of the IM clients.

(Or Kopete, but I have zero experience with that). Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? It looks like a mindless rant from somebody who lived in a cave for the last 4+ years... Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm able to connect to MSN messenger just fine on Linux using Gaim. While I don't get chat or webcam and the like I do get IM abilities.

As far as "just working" I haven't had any problems using Gaim for Yahoo, AIM, MSN, or ICQ. (I don't use it for any other protocols, so I wouldn't know). Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? If you like so much the MSN Messenger look, you can also try aMSN (it also has the nudges), it comes in Linux, OSX and Windows flavors...

http://amsn.sourceforge.net/ Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? its written it tcl/tk and is fugly Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree this topic doesnt deserve this place, it should have been a blog thread or something.

But you cant deny that we dont have a free IM for Linux which can

a) Voice Chat
b) Deply the Webcam
c) File Transfer Without Errors
d) Look great!

Ofcourse the

a) Multi IM Protocols and
b) Better Security [remember there anre many loopholes in the MSN Messenger!]

are a blessing!

But what use is that if I cant voice chat and use webcam with any of the IM Friends.


Although I may add Gyach Extended PY Voice chat is good but doesnt match the main ones! Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I use amsn myself and I enjoy the looks and features it provides and can't complain on my XP box or Gentoo box Seems like very little difference other then amsn is lighter by far... Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? And what about those POINTLESS tabs on the side pitty you cant turn them off.

Actually, you can. The option is in the privacy tab (who knows why).

Anyway, what is the point of this article.. that open source IM clients are ugly? Yep they are.. why not help them out or make your own instead of whinging about it? . Audium for OSX is pretty good looking from what i've seen (don't have my own mac until the mini is out). Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? So now its hip to say MSN Messenger is "tied" and "deeply integarated" into the OS? OH PLEASE GIVE ME A BREAK.

Next I'm going to start seeing posts like Notepad is too firmly entrenched into the system. Or posts that cmd.com is just a another attempt at proprietary lock-in because you can't drop in your fav old version of DR-DOS as a replacement.

If you think gaim stinks - go write something better. Windows has Trillian which works wonderfully and looks nice; there is no reason why OSS can't do the same thing. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Â…at least with all my friends here (I'm a university student in Toronto).

All my friends used to use ICQ but now all of them exclusively use MSN Messenger. Even some of my professors and staff at the university use MSN Messenger.

The pictures and emoticons are very popular and people like the look and feel of MSN Messenger than AIM or ICQÂ… Sat, 15 Jan 2005 06:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? After all, MSN doesn't have encrypted messaging service (gaim-encryption.sf.net), nor spell check, nor multiple account support, nor multiple protocol support, nor multiple platform support (Okay, they do have a Mac version, but when was the last time they updated it?) It can't tell me if my buddy is idle or not, blocked me or not. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 06:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I can and do deny it.

http://gaim-vv.sourceforge.net/

Getting it to compile is the Devil's work, but once you manage it, voice and video both work on MSN.

And - looks great? gaim looks fine for me. I'm not sure which idiot it was who wrote the rule that decreed 'all applications should share a common interface as far as possible with the exception of messaging clients and media players', but I sure as hell don't want him to come anywhere near *my* desktop. I use gaim for messaging, Rhythmbox for music and Totem for video and I'm damned if I'm going to use any neon usability-nightmare the 'kids' this guy (patronisingly) wants to represent might try and foist on me.

eek, am I getting old?

btw, I do agree MSN is extremely popular. I currently live in Canada, I used to live in the U.K. and I have contacts all over the world; my gaim list shows a comfortable MSN majority, which is growing over time. AFAIK ICQ still has the absolute lead if you just count accounts, but a lot of ICQ accounts are inactive these days with people migrating to MSN. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 06:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? ...on using windows, why not look into a free alternative there, like Trillian which has always 'just worked' for me.

Either way, it's a horrible article... even if you take it as an opinion piece. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 06:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Here in the Netherlands MSN Messenger has a market share of basically 100%. And to be quite honst, I just don't really give a damn. MSN is NOT a bad and bloated IM client, that's just pure nonsense. OSS zea... erm people say everything that isn't OSS to be bloated, I don't even pay attention to it anymore.

MSN is fast, reliable, easy, quick, has a decent interface, does video, audio, games, buddy icons, contact grouping etc. etc. It might ie. not do the audio/video as good as Skype does it, but hey, Skype is AIMED at doing that.

There's only one thing I'd like to see: MSN support in iChat. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 06:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Overall this article seemed to not stay on topic. It talks of MSN messenger then jumps to how lack of hot applications keeps users away from Linux and other open source operating systems. Yes, we all know Linux needs some kind of Flash MX or Photoshop equivalent, and as long as there is demand someone will eventually try to fill that gap."

You really missed the point. It was perfectly on topic.

The argument people use for lockin to windows are things like MS Office and games but this guy is highlighting that there is another - for many (especially younger people) - far more important reason for the lockin and that is MSN Messenger.

None of the linux alternatives are as easy to set up, fully featured and pleasant on the eye together as MSNM is. MSNM as many have said just works.

I know from experience that when I made some kids use Linux for a while the *only* thing they bitched about - and I mean the only thing - was "Where is MSN? This thing is horrible! Why can't I send files and where's the webcam thing?"

Get a fully competent messenger program that doesn't look like a dog's breakfast or have needlessy archaic mechanisms to set it up (the account setup and connection method for GAIM; surely you can't say it's a wonder of UI design?) then that is one important barrier knocked over.

I agree with the author wholeheartedly having had the same experience but without having come to the obvious conclusion myself. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 07:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Here in Canada, we also love MSN. Forget AIM, forget ICQ, MSN is all you need. It's really pretty good. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 07:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The title is "MSN Messenger 7: consolidating Windows' lock-in strategy?" I don't see how ranting about the lack of Dreamweaver for Linux relates to that or how "ugly" Gaim is.

Honestly I was expecting an article on how Windows tries to force out competitors by installing their version of software preloaded in the OS.

Problem is MSN uses it's own network and methods of working. It's closed source and Linux can't access those features (nor other OSes) that are popular.

The closed sourced nature of flash and their webcam protocols don't allow for Linux clients to access those MSN features... so should developers make an open alternative? Would it be able to catch on at all with Windows locking itself in by putting MSN Messenger in it's OS?

I get the article's point, I just think the title is misleading. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 07:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Tools / Accounts / Add - what's so hard about that?

I'm sorry, I just don't get where MSN is either pretty or has a good interface. It's a hideous, eye-rending shade of light blue, since when was that pretty? Since when did it look remotely like anything else on your desktop? And the interface! I'm (forced) to use it quite often on my partner's Windows PC and I still don't know what half of it does. There's tiny, near-invisible arrows all over the place which presumably have some mysterious purpose. It wastes vast realms of screen space on useless crap and adverts. No, sorry, MSN *does* have some good features, and the uPNP integration is astonishingly useful and _actually works_, but it's an interface nightmare. I'll take gaim - which actually *uses the system theme*, has tabs, and is extremely compact - any day. On Windows, either gaim or Trillian with a 'standard Windows' theme if I need its features. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 07:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Agreed.
I've had the same problem trying to get people to swap to firefox, showed them the themes to make it nice and they jumpped all over it.

The thing is before anyone will want to try something new its got to look nice. The same goes for everything in life, from computer software, hardware to girlfriends/boyfriends, cars and food.

Its very hard for the human mind to do otherwise. Of course ther are a select few who just want basic workings, or to be a rebel.
These people can run the crappy looking programs, because it does the basics, its not Microsoft etc.
If we take a look at our lives in the same way, these people will go for a car that'll get them to work even if its a rust bucket throw back from the 70's. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 07:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Maybe I just live under a rock, but of the 80-100 people in my GAIM contact list, about 70% use Yahoo Messenger... I live in Vegas now, but the people in my list are from all over the country (I've moved around a bit).

I only have about 5 people who use MSN, well, a couple more that have it as secondary accounts. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 07:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >>>>'Sorry mate, I'm using Linux, you know and, well, could you mail me this picture instead?'. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 07:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Somehow I managed to never get asked if I have MSN. Only one person I know to use an IM does not have ICQ. He uses iChat (AIM).
Maybe I'm lucky. Or things in Germany are different. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 07:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? [rant]
Its a personal annoyance of mine, having to use msn, but alas, *everyone* else uses it.
I'm not sure if this is a cause or a effect of this, but everyone on msn always seem to have hotmail accounts, most dont appear to know that you dont actually need a hotmail account to use msn, but rather just a passport.net login.
Emailing hotmail users (used to at least) annoyed me to no end, send them a 2 meg attachment and it gets rejected. I find it amazing that so many people (I'm guessing hotmail to be the biggest webmail provider in the world?) put up with such a shit service for as long as they did (mailboxes are now 250MB, instead of the previous 2MB).
Of random note: msn goes down quite alot, not to mention I get disconnected if I try and download at the same time as using it (wtf? No other IM network did that to me). And theres not even a SSL option anywhere.
Damn newbies, they always end using and popularizing the crap standards.
[/rant] Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Or you could just not use it. Any why are they complaining about a BETA of MSN? Who cares? I removed MSN from my XP install using nLite. Of the two people I know on MSN and the one I know one Yahoo (the rest on AIM), gaim for windows works just fine. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? the author has a point. i live in europe also(portugal), and here i can almost say that 100% of IMers, use MSN Messenger. Things like 'can i have your msn?' are quiet common.. actually, nobody ever asked me IF i have a MSN account, they just assume everybody has one.
Sad actually, they are even stop using IRC and using the lousy chat rooms in MSN to talk with each other...

when is jabber going to stand up? Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? No, No, No. I live in Europe (Germany) and I don't know a SINGLE PERSON who uses MSN (exclusively), and I have more than 30 people on my buddy list. Why is it that MSN users in Europe always think that when THEY know many people who use MSN, EVERYONE in Europe must use MSN. STOP THAT! Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? i dont think they are necessarily trying to lock you in, but it would be smart if they did.

i mean they had a windows media player for solaris and even an IE for solaris users. They may still have it somewhere I'm not sure.

I always thought of MSN as an annoyance. I would say #1 AIM #2 Yahoo #3 MSN #4 ICQ.

MSN Messenger does work much better than many jabber clients but i still don't like it. It's too much eye-candy for me. I'm a command line guy Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? IM is starting to (did?) replace email as a primary method of communication on computers. I know when I migrated my GF over to Linux for about a month not having Trillian was one of the things I heard her complain most about.

Also, all my friends used to use ICQ till AOL purchased and killed it. Most my technical frieds moved off Yahoo cause they keep intentionally breaking the protocol so it won't work with anything but the "official" Yahoo chat. Now most people seem to be on either AIM or MSN. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm in Taiwan, and every single person I know uses MSN. Like a previous poster mentioned about some other location, it's so common here that "I'll MSN you later" is heard almost daily. I haven't known anyone that has used ICQ, Yahoo, or AIM clients for about 2-3 years, at least.

Also, every single person I know in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia also uses MSN (although I don't know that many people in those locations, maybe 30 total). Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "There is Gaim, there is Kopete. Are they attractive? No, they aren't. Their interfaces are terrible."
that's a matter of personal preference... i happen to think msn messenger is ugly as hell and gaim looks quite nice...

"Moreover, all you can do with them is write basic IMs. Bye bye overbloated and stupid nudge and Flash sequences."
good, nudge and flash sequences are annoying and i don't want to see them anyway.

"File transfers? I can swear that you're a lucky guy (girl) when it works. Usually it doesn't, resulting in embarrassing 'Sorry mate, I'm using Linux, you know and, well, could you mail me this picture instead?'."
file transfers work just fine for me in gaim...

"And boy are they ugly. Compare a MSN Messenger 7 chat window and a Gaim window. Gaim (or Kopete for that matter) is so austere that the comparison looks unfair even to people who, like me, usually hate themed windows and flashy-for-the- sake-of-being-flashy interfaces."
i'm not seeing how anyone could think an msn messenger chat window looks good at all...

also, i can't help noticing how most people complain about not having completely unnecessary features like voice chat and video, but don't care about essential features like encrypted IMs... Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "What happens when the corporation anybody seems to love to hate, namely Microsoft, release a killer app and of makes it free (as in dollars), but, of course, keeps its source jealously closed?"

nothing good.

btw, learn free and profit without the $!

human spirt and community are what we all need.

NOT... "where do you want to go today?"

BUT... "what do you stand for today?" Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Quote: "So now its hip to say MSN Messenger is "tied" and "deeply integarated" into the OS? OH PLEASE GIVE ME A BREAK."

It most probably is, wouldn't surprise me. It's funny how Microsoft refuses to make Linux and BSD versions of msn messenger, windows media player and ms office, but it can afford to make versions of this very same software for Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, both of which have smaller market shares (i'm sure all of the Mac fans will jump up with this comment, but tough, it's the truth - deal with it). It's quite plain and simple that Microsoft knows that Linux is a real rival, and that OS X isn't, and that's why it's holding back on what are (unfortunately) key applications still tying people to Microsoft Windows.

Imagine if these applications had Linux versions:

1. Adobe Photoshop
2. Macromedia Dreamweaver
3. Adobe Illustrator
4. Adobe InDesign
5. Microsoft Office
6. Microsoft MSN messenger
7. Microsoft Windows Media Player

Imagine how many people would switch to Linux. Go on. The truth is that a lot of people won't leave Windows until they see the very same applications on Linux, not just clones, but the "official" applications. The mentality of the average person is that Open Source developers are crap, because they don't get paid for the job that they do (mostly), and they're not part of a large corporation. Sad, but true.

The easiest way that the US DOJ could have opened up the market would have been to force Microsoft to port their key apps to Linux and BSD. They have no reasonable argument not to. I think part of the reason why Microsoft got away with it was because it was very evident how deep the hooks for their key applications go into the core operating system - the US DOJ didn't really want to deliberately sabotage a high income earner for the US government. All this bantying about removing Windows Media Player from the standard install of Windows is a load of crock. It's not the real root cause of the issue, and sadly, it seems no government wants to touch it.

Dave Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm living in germany and I don't know a single person (15-18 y.) who does not use msn messenger. Depends on where you live.
I have tried to convince them to use other messengers, but the nudges and the handwriting finally seems to be more important.
Few people I know use ICQ (usually the computer literates) but they'll have to switch, too, or otherwise they will not be able to chat properly. And all of the Multi-IMs I tested couldn't either send files, display avatars or just did not work at all (jabber sucks. really.). Not to mention the new msn features.

Look, I'm certainly not a fan of msn, but it seems to be the best IM out there and it just WORKS. People don't want to spend hours on their computer to make certain open IM protocols work, they just want to chat. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You do know AOL owns ICQ and AIM and ICQ are actually identical and interoperable on the server side now, right? Only the official clients differ. I haven't seen either official client in years so I don't know what they're like.

BTW, gaim's MSN file transfer, incoming and outgoing, currently works fine. Most cases where people have problems are caused by firewall issues. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 09:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Article and Comment Summary:

A bunch of whining idiots complain about how free software applications are not completely compatible with proprietary applications that use poorly or non-documented protocols.

For those that think that Jabber is a piece of crap, you just showed displayed your ignorance proudly and widely.

Much like email, Jabber does not depend on centralize servers.

Jabber can be used for much more than instant messaging, including inter application communication.

Jabber is secure and chose as the instant messaging app of the Washinton DC police department for its openness, reliability and its ability to encrypt communications from end to end.

Hell, if you need a proprietary apps that works across platforms, use Skype. At least, the Skype folks have taken the trouble to provide the app for every major OS and platform around. And it works easily and sounds like a million bunchs.

I tell you, kids these days... Sat, 15 Jan 2005 09:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? IM is starting to (did?) replace email as a primary method of communication on computers.

Really? But what kind of communication? Serious stuff, or private chit-chat? Public chit-chat? News? Discussion?

There's still IRC, Usenet, WWW (Blogs, Fora, CMS). Blogs are relatively pretty new and you have to admit that its a quite popular way of spreading news and public chit-chat.

Some say, including mr Holwerda, that MSN has 100% market penetration, but i say: which market does it have? The private chit-chat market? In regards to AIM, Yahoo!, ICQ it probably has near 100% indeed (in NL) however by saying so you exclude SMS. SMS is IMO an IM protocol and i'd say its a competitor to MSN. A popular one, if i might add. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 09:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree 100% with the author. They're doing nothing but adding crap to MSN.

iChat has 8 way audio. MSN has 1 on 1.
iChat will be able to do 4 way video chat this year. MSN will still be stuck at 1 on 1 video chat.

We need products to become more functional MS, not just bring up the annoying features of ICQ (the Ding sound, I don't remember the shortcut). Sat, 15 Jan 2005 09:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I began to use IM when I already was on Linux, so I use MSN a lot (in Italy is 70% about of IM accounts) but I only used Microsoft Messenger for it a bunch of times at work.

On Linux I use Gaim, and everything can be said of Gaim expect it is ugly. Gaim has a clean,cool and easy interface, only bad thing being account preferences etc. distributed a bit at random between menus. I hate the Microsoft interface: THAT is ugly. It seems projected by a trisomic teletubbie.

The writer of the article doesn't know all what he says: file transfer on MSN actually works damn good with Gaim 1.x (don't know about Kopete). But surely Gaim still lacks a couple of features, like webcam support, chat backgrounds (yes,it's a silly feature but people love it) and chat support. Also I don't have file transfer over ICQ, that's bad. And management of text effects is quite bad. But things improve impressively: Gaim is one of the few projects where every upgrade seems to be meaningful.

That's what (still) keeps Gaim behind, not surely the interface. And I think using it on a shiny KDE desktop will calm a lot of eye-candy hunger. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 09:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The author is right you know. I agree with you people saying that MSN Messenger is bloated, but that seems to be what people want. In Norway everybody under the age of 40 have MSN Messenger (if they have a computer).

I believe, like the author of the article, that we need a good MSN Messenger clone with support with most of MSN7's features.

I understand that people say; "Gaim has the basic stuff, it's what we need". Yea, many (maybe most?) people that use Linux (for an example) don't care about nudges, emoticons, webcams an all that. The thing is that most of the people who use MSN Messenger do, and if we want more people to use Linux (for an example) instead of Windows, we need to provide _those_ who want the bloat of MSN Messenger, a fairly good MSN client.

I like Gaim, and I like those other MSN Messenger clients with regular GUI which only do the basics, but I can agree on that it's fairly annoying when I need to say; "I'm in BeOS, sorry", when people want to send me a file, use the webcam - whatever.

MSN Messenger is just a _small_ part, but an important part if an OS is to be successful.. It sounds strange, I know, but in Europe, it's true (I'm not talking about you and me here on OSNews with years of computing behind us, but the young girls and boys which don't care about the bloated GUI and such).. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 09:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Most of my friends use ICQ or IRC but they have more computer knowledge than than average joe, the "other" ppl i know use MSN becouse its installed on almost every windows machine and
public computers are often locked down so you cant install third party apps. I myself use Gaim on linux and Miranda IM on windows. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 09:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? From where I come and AFAIK, most people have a Y! ID! coupled with pirated Windoze XP! which is pretty sad!

I love the Linux + Skype Combo Sat, 15 Jan 2005 09:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree with the writer of this article. In Belgium everybody uses MSN messenger. So Microsoft must be doing something right. If we want an OSS IM client to be succesful we have to understand what it is that makes MSN messenger so attractive. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 09:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? [rant mode on]
Oh my, oh my...
What happened to "use the right tool for the right job"?
If I want to transfer files, I'll use a _FILE_TRANSFER_PROTOCOL_ (ftp, scp, or maybe http).

If I want to transmit sound, I'll use a protocol (and software) designed for transmitting sound, such as VoIP via Free World Dialup.

If I want to chat, I'll use a protocol designed for that.

Side note, I am from Europe as well and _nobody_ I knew on the university used MSN; ICQ is the clear leader here, followed by Jabber. At work, AIM was popular with some departments, now an official client based on Jabber is being deployed. No MSN either. So much for "I use -> all use it" generalizations.
[rant mode off]

Except of specific-protocol clients being more mature (compare any reasonable ftp client to what you have built-in in IM clients), this also give a certain amount of freedom to both communicating parties. I'll put the file on a ftp server and don't have to care what client you will use to download it. And when you are going to do it. And whether you are behind a NAT. If I talk to someone via VoIP, I also don't have to care whether he uses LinPhone, some Windows based SW or a HW Cisco phone. Doing this on the MSN network, we both would have to use the one and only MSN client from Microsoft, on their one and only Windows platform.

Waiting for the MS produced, DRM enabled microphone, which will be the only audio HW allowed to work with MSN . Sat, 15 Jan 2005 09:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The "problem" of IM in linux is the same for the most of all opensource software... the target to the projects is to become alike to the "windows" (saw kopete-msn, openoffice-microsoft office, and so on).In this way linux never grow in desktop - inovate!!!create someting new and usefull that people love( and "windows" don´t have) and 'voilá' a winner. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 10:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Here in Belgium, MSN is *very* popular indeed. "Being online" is a synonym to "being logged in on your MSN-account", really. I'm using Gaim on FreeBSD, and 99% of my list is MSN.

I actively try to move people to Firefox and OpenOffice, and sometimes even to Linux/*BSD, but I never try to move anyone to Jabber, as it just is *nothing* of a rival to MSN. MSN (for the Windows people) just works, is very easy, has a lot of "cool features" the young people want etc. Jabber does anyting *I* want, but if people can't set their "buddy icon" (or what is it called), they won't use it.

Anyway, I think MSN works pretty good with Gaim (and Gaim is not ugly at all), so it hasn't been much of a show-stopper for the people I moved to FreeBSD. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 10:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The author has hit the head on the nail, he's so goddamn right. For God's sake, I am a geek, I love computers, I'm sure many in this site are. But that's not the majority, folks. If they can't enjoy (or suffer) flashy interfaces and do everything they do right now, the thought of switching to other OS will never cross their minds, it's as simple as that.

Of course MSN Messenger is just another way to lock people in to windows, never had a doubt about that. And if things n the distant future get ugly for Microsoft on the desktop, you know, they will enforce the EULA and stop people that ahre now using other platforms to connect to _their_ IM network. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 10:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The solution is quite simple. Open Source, multi protocol, IM clients need to be developed that work on both windows and linux, pretty much in the GAIM, KOPETE spirit. I would imagine that much of the code for GAIM and KOPETE could be reused in such an undertaking. Then, if and when people switch, they can still use their "MSN". Sat, 15 Jan 2005 10:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? MSN is also very popular in the Netherlands. And I don't care, I use MSN myself. And I do agree with the author than MSN Messenger is one the the finest pieces of software that MS has ever written, taking in account I am measuring this by their ability to satisfy the needs of their main target audience. Sure, for a LFS/Fluxbox/CLI guy MSN messenger is too bloated, but for teenagers it is close to perfect. It's so usable (for teens) it could have been written by Apple.

I don't agree with the author at all when it comes to GAIM. Gaim on NOT ugly. Gaim is just a GTK app and much can be said about GTK, but not that it has ugly widgets (if themed properly, of course, but that also goes for MSN Messenger and Windows in general). Futhermore, GAIM does have flawless file transfers (YES even when NAT'ed/firewalled with NO ports forwarded) and fully supports avatars. So when it comes to GAIM this rant was grey before it was born. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 11:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The author is right, many students on my university (i live in Venezuela) don't switch to linux or mac because msn messenger. They always ask me "Can I use the latest version of msn on your mac?" and when i show them the "latest" official msn messenger version or amsn messenger...... they stick with crapy windows os. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 11:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Bashing aside, the guy does have a fair point, although doesn't particularly know how to put it across well.

I, living in the UK and being pretty young, do use msn all the time and yes we call it msn. Aim yahoo and icq let alone jabber are rather marginalised.

Gaim IMHO is pretty attractive and does support file transfer. Sometimes things work better, allowing the use of aliases to shorten peoples names, using one window and tabs for different people, having there icon appear next to their name in the buddy list. it's the little things such as webcam support, nudging and voice that have forced me to start using WinXP. Seriously, i've been using Ubuntu solidly for 6 months and had to switch over to Win for WEBCAM SUPPORT (and half life 2). V4L completely sucks, i've spent hours trying to get the thing to work. Obviously i'm not l337 enough and should write it myself but support for webcams is shocking.

WinXP may have it's slight inconsistencies but so does Linux, i've seen the picture from both sides of the fence and believe that WinXP provides less hassle for a usable desktop. I'll of course boot into Ubuntu every other day when i don't want to play games or use the webcam. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 11:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > There is Gaim, there is Kopete. Are they attractive? No, they aren't. Their interfaces are terrible

You sure have not tried Adium for Mac OS X, http://www.adiumx.com/, which happens to be (use) gaim for Mac OS X, have you? It beats bloated MSN hands down with the defaults themes. And you can install your own, if you are not happy.

Someone else pointed about MSN not having spell checkÂ… Well, Mac OS'x version does not even have sound/video chat, and about the spell checking, its lack is even more stupid when they could just use the OS spellchecking services, such as the one the helped me correct a pair of thingies in this Safari form. Adium, though, does use them. ^_^ Sat, 15 Jan 2005 11:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? BTW, not a single soul in Spain uses AIM, people does not even know what that acronym is about, have not heard it ever. A pity, since iChat, whatever the opinion on its looks might be (good enough for me) is by far the least obtrusive IM app I've used. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 11:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have got to say I agree with the author. I'm an european and everybody here uses MSN (Messenger). I don't even try another messaging protocol because nobody uses it, over here. That's a shame really because I'd bet that there are better alternatives. As to the fact of the "inferior" MSN clients, I also agree with him... I can see people skipping linux because of the 'uglier' and 'feature-less' MSN clients. There really isn't one good MSN client for linux, and many people, use their computers mainly to chat in MSN with their friends. It's really popular!

Oh well, it's just my 2 Euro cents... Sat, 15 Jan 2005 11:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Haven't anyone heard of Miranda IM??
www.miranda-im.org Sat, 15 Jan 2005 11:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? BTW, I'm from Portugal. I'm not saying that it's the same in every european country but in many countries, including Portugal, MSN is VERY popular. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 11:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Haha, the author is dead right about MSN and the 'normal' people out there

I'm living in the Netherlands (as you'd probably already guessed) and I hear people talk about it every day, in the trains, schools, cinemas, cafes, etc, etc.

Especially lots of young girls (around the age of 12 - 18) are using MSN Messenger a lot. If you're looking for a girlfriend via the web in the Netherlands, you'll need MSN. It's as simple as that.

Make Gaim be loved and used by women/girls, and the rest of the world will follow, and MSN will be history. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 11:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Probably just me. But Gaim is a lot better than MSN *because* of the lack of support for stupid bells and whistles (e.g. flash). Sat, 15 Jan 2005 11:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I wonder how google's IM will look like ...
just joking !
or perhabs not ? Sat, 15 Jan 2005 11:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Yeah, you are right about that. I don't care nor want stupid bells and whistles, howhever the mainstream does. They feel it's cool, and I can understand that. There are things that make people go COOL! and that just makes them like the thing even more!

Moreover I have to say that gaim for MSN isn't very good... it lacks many features and isn't very polished in some areas. aMSN is better, howhever it doesn't feel very polished and it isn't very snappy... Sat, 15 Jan 2005 11:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? MSN Messanger has a big holding of the young Israeli IM market - Only that here we simply call it "Messanger", the MSN is ommited. MSN also have a big community of zealot followers in Israel, who behave like typical Mac zealots (Excitedly discussing rumers, downloading any other beta, etc.).

But recently there is more and more publicity in the media for stuff like Trialian, Miranda and Gaim - Hebrew readers can just look at IM-related related articles (and their comments) on YNet.co.il . Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? It's true that MSN is the most popular IM here in europe but imho the last thing linux/*nix needs is focusing on "pretty&slow" gui just to be appealing to joe average who bought his first pc 2 years ago just to play videogames.
Back in the days of win9* i was already hungry about all the bloatware that was running inside my hd and this was the mayor reason to switch to linux.
Speaking of gaim, is already quite big and surely doesn't need to waste some more ram just to display some fancy graphics.
We need softwares that do their job, nothing more, nothing less. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? That is your vision, there are also people who would like Linux to succeed outside the geekworld. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I might be awfully wrong here, so please correct me, but it seems back in 92/93 when I just started to use IM on a Windoze platform, ICQ was the biggest thing and the standard...MSN wasn't even around. Then the Success of ICQ probably got Microsoft's attention and they decided to build MSN IM into their system.

I am originally from Taiwan, and admittedly, nowadays a lot of people do use MSN Messenger because it's just there. My mom probably doesn't even know it's called "MSN" or whatever; she knows if she wants to chat with her friends, she just turns on the puter and "click here and there and hey there're my friends!"

My point is, if it'd been ICQ or Skype that comes with Windoze, that's what my mom and her friends would be using today.

I am now studying and living in Berlin Germany, and I'd say both Yahoo and MSN messengers are popular here: most of the average users I know have both, and the biggest attraction very possibly being the webcam function.

So I didn't try to convince them to swtich to GAIM or JABBER, becuase neither the "free as in beer" nor "free as in freedom" argument would be any of their concern.

I'm having a great success with Skype though...people are eager to find ways to voice chat for free. I even converted my mom and dad; we talk all the time on SKype. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Here in portugal it's the same thing. Msn this, msn that. Some people still use icq, but as for aim and yahoo, forget it. I've been trying to get some of my friends to move to jabber w/msn transport, and been having some success.

But for my sister, the only thing that is keeping her from migrating to linux is msn messenger. She uses firefox, word for basic stuff (i.e. you'll trow in abiword/kword and she won't notice a thing), winamp and emule. AND msn. I've shown her all the im's i can think of, and the only ones that are getting there, are amsn (amsn.sf.net) and the closest one is mercury (old dmsn -- www.mercury.to).

The problem with mercury and amsn, is that they are made in java and tcl/tk respectively, and they are SLOW. They crawl doing things msn does fast, so, well, msn is better (as in, incredibly fast for all the crap that it uses and does), especially if you are using it in old pc's, that don't have a ton of ram & cpu to spare.

So the author is 100% right, and I think if we had a nice decent, fast, msn look-alike for linux, you would have more changes of migrating lots of people to linux. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Messenger is by far the most widely used IM in France, and due to the ever increasing use of webcams and its closed conferencing protocol, I'm beginning to hear from people that one reason they wouldn't drop Windows is everybody they know uses Messenger's video conferencing and you can't do that without Windows today. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Ok... I don't wanna start a flame here... but why can't people write this kind of thing cleary showing that's their opinion and not some kind of undenyable thuth?! Seriosly... "(...)but, of course, keeps its source *jealously* closed(...)" I'm not for proprietary stuff, but this way of writing just shows me a closed mind or someone with radical politics... Please, we can't agree with everybody else, but at least let's respect diferent points of view... If you don't respect them, who're you to deserve their respect?

#

Now about the IM discussion... Right now I think that almost everybody "joe user" is switching to msn's messenger service... why? all this features, bells and so on? well... yeah, but there's more...
it's SIMPLE. I mean... it's really easy to use... IMHO, it really provides a layer of communication beyond the message... much more like talking to the actual person. Do you have to do any configuration to have this experience? Probably not for the joe user, it realy close to the experience you have with a phone let's say... with a phone you just need to pick it up, dial e wait to talk to the person you want. You can or can not reach your objective, but that's all you have to do. All to other bells are not necessary, but you can use then if you want and if you can...

hmmm... ok, I'm finishing here for now... 'head's blowing, lot of work to do... really bad english inside... yeah, better stop here... Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? MSN is indeed very popular in the Netherlands too. I think the most important reason for that is that most Dutch people use Hotmail.
Hotmail is very impractical, I think. For example, GMX offers you 1 GB storage and POP access for free. But still, Hotmail is so common for young people that 99% of them write down their address like "kusjes1118@h".
And then Hotmail is the easiest to use, because you can just sign in with your email address - no need to register or sign up as you would need to do with AIM or ICQ.
On the other hand, where I live in Germany now, about everyone seems to use ICQ. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You are terribly wrong, yes, cos ICQ didn't exist in 1992 or 1993. I think it started in 95 or 96; when I signed up in 1996 I got a six-digit number, and I don't think anyone's got less than five digits (they probably started in the five-digit numbers to make the first few subscribers think it was popular). Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I think Yahoo Msgr has all the features (you can "shake" the other user's window since ages - it's called buzz) with Voice, Cam, Flash and so on, and it is not from Microsoft. There is even an old Linux version, maybe they'll update it some time. So, I really think Yahoo is almost the same as MSN Messenger, but morally better because its not from MS What do you think? Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You're right, how stupid of me!! *embarrassed* It is around 95/96 that I started using ICQ...or maybe even later, since I got an 8-digit number! Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hehe Minghan, i got a 7 digit ICQ number :-) Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? i have been using ICQ and skype on windows for years (kopete and skype in SUSE), resolutely refusing to install or have anything to do with MSN, but recently that changed.

my brother went to Hull university where he found that MSN was the only IM protocol they allowed through the campus firewall. so i installed MSN. i tried to set up Trillian for MSN but maybe i am too much of a tard, cos i couldn't get it to work. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 13:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Very good article, really. MSN is extremly popular here in Europe, I know just 2-3 "geeks" who _also_ have ICQ, (though they of course have MSN too), and basicly _nobody_ with AIM.
And MSN is one of the apps (the other one is Word) that makes me not to delete my Win-installation. (I still use MS Word since the OO.org's swedish dictionary is really terrible and can not be compared in any sense with MS', unfortunately).
I'm not saying Kopete needs nudge-feature, but a good file transfer and (most important) webcam support is really missing. Nobody's using NetMeeting today, so GnomeMeeting's capability to connect to such protocol is really useless nowadays. We need a better V4L2-implementation/integration with the IM-apps! Sat, 15 Jan 2005 13:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? It's true that MSN Messenger has a lot more cool features than most used open IM clients have by default, but I should say that things are changing fast.
- Amsn has support even for tha nudge plugin
- Gaim-vv already have support for video and voice!
- Kopete has a plugin which connects with video-voice applications (you can now select whch, so that it can be Gnomemeeting, or the other of KDE whose name I don't remember...)
- I don't know about games support, but there must be something somewhere. Many clients (amsn, gaim, kopete) support plugins, and there must be that kind of plugin.

What I feel is that jabber is getting no priority. I'd like to see it to support video and voice, and a good client with plugin support wich centrates in developing a featureful jabber support with everything need: also remote assistance et all ! (hey, in kopete I cannot even send formated messages via jabber :-P)

But anyways, I can tell you that if you want, you can do all of that- the only problem is that it's not integrated in one app, but that is being solved. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 13:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? So now its hip to say MSN Messenger is "tied" and "deeply integarated" into the OS? OH PLEASE GIVE ME A BREAK.

Last time I had a Windows XP install, I could NOT remove the horrid Messenger without going through much rigamarole. If you can't easily remove something, I would call it pretty "deeply tied". Sat, 15 Jan 2005 14:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Never used MSN, just ICQ and can't imagine something to be much better than Miranda.. I don't want to touch poorly written bloated software and that applies to just about all MS software I've used. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 14:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree with author. M$ did the same (embed in Windows) with Internet Explorer (result: Netscape died), with Windows Media Player (Real and others are dying) and now with Messenger.

The strategy is the same: first make a clone (not better, only working the sufficient) from the best product on same category, then makes it available as free download, at last put it embedded in windows and kill competition.

Normal people are stupid and lazy to use any alternative not included with windows.

If M$ can make an componentized Windows XP embedded, who lets install only what you want, why not impose MS to sell the same for common users ? Someone must stop M$... Sat, 15 Jan 2005 14:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Sure i hope that linux will succeed outside the "geekworld" but i also think that is important to educate new computers users.
They should learn that fancy animations&co slow down the computer for no reason and this is one of the reason why any new software release under win32 is often slower than the previous.
If instead we give them all the bloatware they like just to make them say "ohh this is cool!"
i fear that they will never learn how to choose the right software for their needs..and in the long term users who prefer performance over style will be forced to use apps they don't like because nearly everything will have 3D gui and stuff like that Sat, 15 Jan 2005 14:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You're dead on!

For a long time I just could not believe how preinstalled software should matter at all since I was always installing my own preferred applications anyway. But once I saw how technically-handicapped people get completely lost when the icon they want to click suddenly just isn't there, I realized what "average user" really means.

All the people bashing the article really really really miss the point. The article has a VERY valid point.

And the sad truth really is that most opensource GUI apps just suck. Bad. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 14:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >So now its hip to say MSN Messenger is "tied" and "deeply >integarated" into the OS? OH PLEASE GIVE ME A BREAK.

Where did the article say that???? It was saying that here is an application which people like to use that is not available for anything other than windows. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 14:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "What happens when the corporation anybody seems to love to hate, namely Microsoft, release a killer app and of makes it free (as in dollars), but, of course, keeps its source jealously closed?"

WTF?

iChat is a killer app. Not MSN Messenger. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 14:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > What happens when the corporation ... release a killer app and of makes it free (as in dollars), but, of course, keeps its source jealously closed?

Competitors can not steal (cut-n-paste) work of many software developers, testers, usablility specialists, documentation writers paid by the corporation. Instead, competitors are forced to come with their own product, investing their own money and time into it, 100%.

While this type of relationship will look silly and plain wrong in the future ideal world where people work for common good and not for money, in the world where we live it is called competitive advantage.

In the future world of people free of pursuing material gains, the whole idea of multiple independent groups of people wasting their time working on duplicate products will be laughed at. In our current world it is called competition.

Also, the trend of giving free Internet software large scale started with Netscape. While officially they sold Navigator, you could always download free version from their Web site.
That did not stop Netscape from achieving spectacular success with their IPO, making many company employees stinky rich. This is an example when market forces give credit to silly ideas of giving away software for free.

Keeping Netscape sources guarded at that time prevented competitors from just copying them, and forced other companies to come with their own products, including Internet Explorer and Opera.

And worse than that, use it to maintain a strong lock-in to the Windows platform?

Worse for whom? The worse is when you have a good enough OS you want to sell to the public- or sell services based on that OS to the public, but no applications to keep people on that OS. After all, only small percent of users chooses desktop OS on its technical merits, most look for applications. Not so for server OS, where technical merits rule.

I know that, you know that, Microsoft knows that, Linux developers know that, OS X developers know that. Everyone knows that. Not everyone acts.

It is like saying that if car dealership offers me free oil change for 5 years if I buy their new car, it is worse. Worse for whom? For me? No- I have a car and an oil change. For dealer? No- they sold me a car. For their lazy inept competitors: truly YES. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 14:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Worse as in a case when your friend bought a car and the dealer added for no extra cost the imaginary CatFur(tm) interior. Your friend used to give you a ride to office. He still would, but you happen to be allergic to cats. Too bad for you. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 15:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? ""But you cant deny that we dont have a free IM for Linux which can

a) Voice Chat
b) Deply the Webcam
c) File Transfer Without Errors
d) Look great!""

AYTTM actually does allow two-way webcam broadcasting via Yahoo.

http://ayttm.sourceforge.net Sat, 15 Jan 2005 15:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The kind that lights a bulb in people's mind Sat, 15 Jan 2005 15:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Yahoo Messenger has been able to do all of these things and more for years. And they have versions for Mac, Linux, and FreeBSD as well as a Web client. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 15:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? MSN Messenger in Poland is pretty much nonexistent. I don't know anyone who uses it - more, I don't know anyone who knows someone who uses MSN Messenger

IM market here is dominated by 3 Polish IMs: Gadu Gadu, Tlen and WP Contact. They sum up to nearly 100% of market share (counting also other IMs but using plugins for those protocols).

Some people use other, non-polish IMs but only as secondary means. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 15:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You can blame MSN all you want, but it has had videoconference for _ages_, and the winks stuff is stupid but people like it.


I don't see such innovations in jabber or open source clients, sorry.BTW, the "animations" in msn 7.0 beta are flash(.swf) so it should be not hard to implement them. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 16:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Miranda-IM's ( http://www.miranda-im.org/ ) interface blows Trillian/Gaim/Kopete's bloated crap out of the water. Too bad it's win32-only. In *nix I'm stuck with naim, an ncurses client with decent AIM/ICQ support. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 16:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? What the hell? Are you people still using Gaim .52? Sat, 15 Jan 2005 16:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Last time I had a Windows XP install, I could NOT remove the horrid Messenger without going through much rigamarole. If you can't easily remove something, I would call it pretty "deeply tied".

it has, you know, a uninstaller. The default which XP installs is broken, yes (you can blame microsoft for that if you want). But it's not "tied". It's "installed" and the uninstaller is "failing", there's only "deep tying" in your mind Sat, 15 Jan 2005 16:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? There reason why i like Kopete and Gaim is because they have such a nice clean interface. I hope this will stay this why.
Windows is a bad example of a good GUI. KDE and Gnome get a lot better! I hope their interfaces keep clean. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 16:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Sorry, my English is not so good to understand your car analogy.
I was lost when you said that imaginary product could cause real allergy.

Also, if product is not imaginary, and I was leeching on a good will of my friend to give me a ride, it is my and my freeloader problem only if his new car can't be used by me.

Finally, are you sure my friend didn't do it intentionally, to get rid of a freeloader- but politely.

Here is another car analogy for you, a better one. You can buy a car with 3 years warranty (industry standard) or with 5 years warranty and 5 years free oil change.

It would be silly to demand from the car manufacturer who offers 5 years warranty and free oil change to extend this offering to cars from his competitors.

It would be stupid to blame that car manufacturer for going an extra mile to attract customers to his cars.

It would be plain moronic to say that it is bad for customer.

It would be right, if you wish to, demand other car manufacturers follow the suit and provide extra warranty plus free oil change- giving credit to one which does it already. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 16:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? In Latin America 90% of the IM users use MSN. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 16:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "There reason why i like Kopete and Gaim is because they have such a nice clean interface. I hope this will stay this why.
Windows is a bad example of a good GUI. KDE and Gnome get a lot better! I hope their interfaces keep clean."



Exactly. Gaim has an EXTREMELY clean interface. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? This article just convinced me to download MSN Messenger. I haven't tried it in a couple of years, but after reading all the features it has I'm going to download it right now. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? they have a windows and linux client (java). www.qnext.com Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? It's pure opinion. "Stéphane" makes claims that Windows messenger has a nicer looking interface than gaim or kopete and then does NOTHING to back it up! Just as well, because I seriously prefer the windows that gaim pops up to the ridiculous out-of-place MSN windows. Native widgets are where it's at, and I'm sorry to say that putting other clients down because they use them makes you sound a little like some junior-high whiz kid whose tastes haven't matured yet.

He claims that file transfers seldom work...I've never had one fail. That's with both me and the recipient behind routers, and with me as part of a large firewalled subnet (wireless network of over 16k users) and the recipient at home. File transfers have been flawless for me so far.

Display pics "kind of" work. How do they not? I'm able to see other people's display pictures, and I'm able to set my own. Seems to me that "works".

There's no nudge, and no full screen flash. This is a good thing :rolleyes:

The only thing I'd like to see added is whiteboard support...that's kind of handy.

I've been using gaim almost exclusively for 4 years now. I have to switch to MSN messenger every now and again to work on windows (and yes, I use the new beta 7) and I find it awkward and painful to use every single time.

Next time you publish an article passing it off as an analysis, please label it as pure speculation; if you use me as a reference, your analysis is completely wrong. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Those of you bashing the article and the replies in favor of it are completely missing the point.

MSN is a KILLER APP. Those teens in Austrailia were all cool with Linux *except* for the fact that it had no MSN.

Joe/Jane Teenybopper and Joe/Jane User don't want good for you but vile tasting and hard to swallow cod liver oil. They want yummy easy to unwrap, chew and swallow Hersheys chocolate.

You're never going to convert the masses to cod liver oil. You need to find away to put a nice chocolately exterior over the cod liver oil.

And for those dingleberries spouting the old "why don't you go out and write your own code" line of crap a doodle doo. I ask why don't you go out and become certified mechanics for whatever sort of transportation you use? Or, if you walk everywhere, why don't you go get your journeyman plumbing, electrical, or carpenter certification?

What? Don't have the time/talent/interest to learn an involved and complex skill?

Bingo. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I don't think that there is a valid reason for open source IM clients to support some of the trippier interface features, like nudging.

Awesome article. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? 100% agree to this sweet article. Explain a non IT Scientist to use apps with an ugly 1980s' User Interface. Tell the people "You can't do this and that, but it's still better to use the non working free soloution".

If the typical "my GUI is a shell" or "KDE isn't overloadedat all" Computerscientists don't get that usability looks different and feels different - well, be sure to wait another decade to see linux on desktop. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 18:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Geez have you guys actually ever tried GAIM? If I had to name one app that has the cleanest interface on earth it'd definitely be GAIM. Also, it is very usable (just like most gnome apps), just fill in 2 (YES TWO, just like in the real Mensenger) text fields (username + password) and you are ready to go. With one or two more mouse clicks you can also auto-login @ startup. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 18:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? People migrated from MS DOS to Windows without the same applications. Lotus 1-2-3 users switched over to Excel or Quatro-Pro just so they could use the other apps. Same thing happened during the transition from the Apple II to the IBM PC. Most users did not use Visi-Calc after they switched, they used Lotus 1-2-3 on. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 18:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I will give the equivalent for Linux. Note that some of them are also available for Windows and MacOSX.

1. Adobe Photoshop: Gimp
2. Macromedia Dreamweaver: Quanta, Bluefish, Nvu
3. Adobe Illustrator: Scribus
4. Adobe InDesign: I never used that product. Anyone is welcome to add the equivalent
5. Microsoft Office: Open Office. VErsion 2 will allow easy transition from MS Office than the current version (1.1.4).
6. Microsoft MSN messenger: Gaim, AMSN(my sister has it on her IBook.
7. Microsoft Windows Media Player : Xine, MPlayer, Kaffeine Sat, 15 Jan 2005 18:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree it's true that Microsoft want to lock users into MSN, we can't blame him for trying that, that's what he does.

People like bells and whistles more than stability, security, freedom or any of that stuff, at least the great majority.

That's not a good thing, but that's how things work.

Besides, it really doesn't matter how many things YOU say in this kinds of articles/posts, or how YOU think things should be.

What really matters is how things are being done, and as it seems none of you is a developer and will not contribute a single bit to the cause you think is good.

OpenSource software isn't made up magically out of the blue; we need developers. I can say that I myself am the one that made almost all of the bulk of what the Gaim's MSN protocol plugin is right now. I made user displays and file transfer work, and I can tell you right I'm alone in implementing all the features people want for MSN on Gaim (except from Voice and Video), not to mention bugfixes.

I find it kind of funny how you talk about in which direction should an army of developers should go, when in fact we are just a few.

So are you going to do something about it or just complain? Sat, 15 Jan 2005 18:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Your car and oil analogy doesn't really work. If you get oil for free it only affects you and no one else cares. Not the same with communication software since, after all, you are using it to communicate with _others_.

Now, according to the article MSN is very popular. The problem is that it works on Windows and only partially on other platforms (I personally have no idea since I don't use any IM at all).

If everyone else is using MSN and I'd like to get into this IM thing I'd be left out since I don't use Windows and couldn't communicate with them. Would it not be better if some open protocol was used instead of a proprietary one?

This should answer your question "worse for whom?". Sat, 15 Jan 2005 18:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? the author of the rant is assuming that Linux's goal is to be user friendly to young people.

That's the error: Linux's goal is to be a free version of Unix. It's best use is specific projects like science apps and more recently thanks to StarOffice/OpenOffice business apps.

Multimedia conversion is an ongoing issue and Linux will probably work best if it makes its apps to work with Linux and not worry about M$ compatibility. M$ obviously isn't making their products to be compatible with Linux or even mac why should Linux? Sat, 15 Jan 2005 18:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I use Gaim. It is not bad and not bad-looking either. It covers all im needs on all protocols I need. (ICQ, MSN and Yahoo). It is not invasive as MSN. It is very stable.
MSN interface is bloated and inefficient and it covers one protocol only. So, really MSN is no match for Gaim in my opinion. Webcam support is much better (uses less resources) in old Netmeeting, which is also retaining some compatibility with open apps like Gnomemeeting. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 18:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Not sure about in America, but here in Canada, it would be weird, unless someone still doesn't have internet, to not have msn. Everyday msn's addresses are exchanged. I often use amsn for linux, that does an OK job at, but very much so sucks for file transfers. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 18:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? If I understand. GAIM is creating a better API that people can connect to. This has a lot of useful ramifications.

For example:
Some can create a nicer looking client. Maybe one that follows the HIG. Or IM'ing could be placed in just about any program, very nice. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 18:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I live in Portugal (europe, for the geographically impaired) and I must say that there is only one person I talk to using ICQ. The rest of my contact list is MSN (or "messenger" as it is called).

Moreover, everybody else I talk to seems to use MSN. At least the people in my faculty and especially the people from my course (Computer Science) and people from the department where I work (Chemistry). This comprises students and teachers.
It may not be representative, but we are talking several different generations and higher-than-average education.
My sister and his colleagues also seem to use MSN-only. This comprises students at the pre-college stage.

This is funny, since some time ago most of them were using ICQ, but have since dropped it like a bad habit..

I personally *hate* Microsoft's MSN Messenger and use Trillan (3.0) when on Windows. It is rather feature complete, only missing the games (irrelevant for me and everybody I know) and video (available in the pay version). Is has audio, avatars, working file transfers and the sorts, on a clean interface.

When on Linux I use GAIM, which I find just barely "eatable". The interface is clumsy, works erratically (transfering files) and is missing a shit-load of features that I personally don't care about, but which are important for everybody else.

To sum things up, the guy is right, MSN Messenger is actually locking more people to Windows than almost any software out there. And until Linux gets a decent multi-protocol IM client, it is dead in the water for the masses.

BTW, MSN Messenger:mac is total crap, it has even less features than GAIM and gets disconnected every once in a while (this time, doesn't seem server related) without any warning or indication. You just find out hours later when you try to send anybody a message, and it barfs.

And yes, I have said inumerous times "sorry, you can't send me a file, I'm on Linux" which makes me feel like I'm doing something illegal or that I'm some kind of pervert... This was somewhat mitigated when GAIM got file transfers over MSN, but it doesn't work half the times (and sometimes it even makes GAIM coredump). Sat, 15 Jan 2005 19:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > 3. Adobe Illustrator: Scribus

:Inkscape

> 4. Adobe InDesign: I never used that product. Anyone is welcome to add the equivalent

:Scribus

You don't seem to have dealed with apps like them :-) Sat, 15 Jan 2005 19:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I use AMSN lol lol lol lol ... but i always prefer icq, the only contact i have in ICQ is from my girlfriend , but personaly i prefer Icq 4 Xtraz then MSN 5,6,7 ...

Well Linux never had pointed Desktop as a goal ...

In this days i prefer using Gentoo with gdesklets and translucent, etc then Windows, i never liked windows i don't know why but i don't like it.

Yestearday i have installed Solaris 10 in a Desktop machine and the gui java 7 is amazing, some bugs but is amazing, and it's based on gnome and nautilus, so Linux can be amazing with xorg 6.8, gedesks, gnome, translucent, i use Linux since 99 and comparing with windows since 99, Linux as develop 110%, windows is always the same ...

Long time i am asking this tell me 3 good reason to left my GNU/Linux? Sat, 15 Jan 2005 19:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The article is great. The regular linux user doesnt seem to care about the nudges or the handwriting, but exactly: REGULAR LINUX USERS. The author asks for improving our IM's for getting MORE people to linux. This is not like searching for the GAIM/Kopete replacement in the community. Its just for having what it needs to show that in linux people is not gonna lack of their connectivity achieved in the MSN. If you are a linux user is great, now youre one of us. But we have a market waiting to have a better OS, with the apps they learned to love. They've grown with those. Lets give them what they need and they will have less doubt to come with us. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 19:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? AMSn have nuget

lol, take it easy Linux doesn't have to do cheap propaganda calling communist to others in a country that everyone knows that is bad for image ...

Let them speak and reelase longhorns and other stufs... They always will be with bugs and other funny stufs to exploit ... Sat, 15 Jan 2005 19:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Looks like sociology in Belgium is dying.

The author seems to have forgottten the simple fact: once a user gets fed with bells'n'whistles, he wants two things: stability and usability.

There is an enormous amount of very nice, isable and fetureful IM applications in OSS world. I'm myself *very* happy with Psi, which is a Jabber-client. I still have contacts from ICQ worls, so I just use an ICQ gate. It *JustWorks*.

Go figure. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 19:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Who remembers ICQ? It seemed impossible but MSN Messenger came out of nowhere and destroyed ICQ empire as far as brazilian users are concerned. Yes, MSN is bloated. GAIM is not that bad: a couple of more features and it will be just as good as MSN is. All I know is that, ICQ did not inovate. Who can still stand to press ALT+S in order to send a message? In MSN a simple ENTER will do it. MSN is just simpler to use. Go online and have your contacts... you don't need to capture id's made out of trillion numbers like ICQ have. Just an email will do your buddy into your list. In Brazil, MSN is the only mainstream IM. 90% of us uses it. ICQ is still the fading choice of those very conservative... and they are being yes, discriminated like the author said. BUT I AIN'T KEEP PRESSING ALT+S TO SEND A MSG. NO WAY. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 19:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? MSN Messenger is extremely popular in asian or latin american countries

C'mon you gotta be kidding. I'm from Brazil. It's been a year or so, no one uses MSN Messenger anymore. I have about 30 people in my list. Only one is online right now. Only 3 or 4 appear online once in a while.


MSN Messenger is dead here. Used to be very popular 2 years ago. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 20:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? very soon linux users will be able to have this:
http://www.trowbridge.org/beagle-im-logs.png

Beats nudge features (although it's an interesting idea). I think this would be useful for about any user personally. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 20:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Exactly. Gaim has an EXTREMELY clean interface."

Gaim like most oss IMs looks sterile, boring and lacks features people use to express themselves and their personality and that is precicely what msn has and gaim doesn't: personality. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 20:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? MSN Messenger is dead here. Used to be very popular 2 years ago.

Are you insane? As Whithersporne said, MSN easily holds a huge share of IM users in Brazil. Nearly all kids and twenty-somethings use it exclusively. My ICQ online list keeps getting smaller. I refuse to use MSN, but I happen to be a geek, and a geek who loves the KISS paradigm when it comes to IM. This must be your case, too.

@Whithersporne: If you use Miranda IM, you don't have to press ALT+S to send your messages. ENTER will do. You can configure it to your tastes. Try it. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 20:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Exactly. Gaim has an EXTREMELY clean interface.


Not quite. Gaim has been critized a _lot_ by gnome developers. In fact, gaim 2.0(CVS) has tons of UI improvements in the preferences window - that means it was bad before.


Take any example: to change your nickname in MSN, for example. You have to go to "tools->actions->>account>". Or try to change your buddy icon in MSN too. You've to change it in the account's properties. Or the window which appears when no account is connected. Just ugly, ugly, ugly (there're nice places of course). I hope gnome developers merge or fork it, or gaim developers start to take HIG seriously. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 20:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? It is like saying that if car dealership offers me free oil change for 5 years if I buy their new car, it is worse.

Nope. Completely different. Let's see...

First: The first thing that is different is that you don't have with cars a monopoly like you have with pc OS. The fact Windows is a monopoly gives a whole new dimention to this.

Second: the car & oil you use doesn't affect me at all so i don't care, use what you want. But that doesn't happen with chat client: if you use MSN, and i need to talk to you, i need to use MSN too.

Third: the fact Windows is a monopoly, makes MSN quick become a monopoly. And if everybody uses MSN, i'm literally forced to use MSN, which is kinda the point 2 i made before, but now extended to "everybody".

Fourth: MSN only runs on Windows, so now because i want to talk to people i not only have to use MSN, but i also have to use Windows.

Fith: MSN is free, but Windows is not. So now i'm not only using something i didn't want, i was forced to use, but now i'm also forced to spend money on this, i have no option.

Sixth: how does communication between people compare with the oil you put on your car. It doesn't. They're completery different things.

Victor. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 20:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I havn't bothered reading through the pages of comments here, but I'm gonna throw in my 2 (euro, since this is on MSN) cents.

I'm in the UK, and MSN is really the *only* messsaging service that gets used, some people use Yahoo! messanger, but not nearly as many as MSN.

As for claiming the IM clients are ugly, I don't want an IM client to be pretty, and I don't really want it to play games. I want to be able to *IM* with it.

File transfers work flawlessly here (although admitadly I'm on a routed IP block which helps), as does everything else. I'd rather use GAIM than Microsoft's client any day. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 21:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hi,
I'm here to defend amsn, because what is said here is true, I agree with it, but I don't think that it is so *dramatic*, I mean, alot of people switch to linux, and alot of them take their final decision when they see amsn. Our main goal (I'm an amsn developper) is to provide a simple to install/use msn client that has the same look and feel than microsoft's messenger, and give them as much customization as possible as well as all features available in the official client. And I think we're doing a pretty good job, when I talk about amsn to someone, they try it and love it and they show it to everybody, alot of my "how to open notepad" friends will never switch to linux, but they already switched to amsn in windows, which actually means that even if you have the choice between the official oh-so-flashy client, they will still use amsn because of it look-and-feel and because of it's features (I'm talking about people who actually love those flashy things..).
Amsn is an MSN client (not multiprotocol like gaim) it runs pretty fast even on really slow computers with almost no RAM even if we use tcl/tk (we use tcl/tk because the project was began with it and it's too late to change and primarly so that new linux newbies won't have to compile anything, just download and click, user-friendliness and easy-to-use are priority).. anyways, about those features people are talking about that are not available in linux, I didn't read everything but I'm sorry, amsn has almost everything you're asking for :
- Nudges are available
- amsn supports video/audio chat pretty well (compilation of a plugin needed)
- File transfers work even if you are behind a firewall and strongly NAT'ed without upnp support, files will get through either you're sending or receiving (many bugs in this feature but it should be stable for next release)
- Support for display pictures, custom emoticons
- Skins have a great power on customization, we now have an MSN7 skin that gives you the same look and feel as MSN beta (version 7),with display pictures inside the contactlist and everything
- Tk interface is ugly but we're trying to correct this with our own 3d-like (skinnable) buttons and widgets
- Alot of skins, features, like remote-controlling your amsn, auto away messages, alarms on contacts, add notes for each user, block/unblock whole group, custom nicknames and custom color for a contact, set your friendly name, and hundreds or thousands of other features, everything fully customizable which gives amsn a powerfull advantage over that "little" official client..
the default skin is "normal", if you want, you can have a flashy interface or a morbid one, depends on the skin you choose, and we're putting alot of effort to make it even more user friendly..
Another advantage over microsoft is that if you have a problem with amsn (probably the same goes for all OSS) or if you would like a new feature, you just write an email or tell us the problem in one of our forums, and you will usually get an answer/a fix/a patch/or whatever within 1 day (5 minutes if I'm awake), try sending a bug report or feature request to microsoft and tell me how much time you will have to wait before getting an answer IF you ever get one...
anyways, this isn't advertisment for amsn, please don't take it that way, but it is only to answer the original post, even in the open-source community, you can find some softwares that really are even better than what microsoft gives you (the proof : thousands of users use amsn over official client even if they only have windows), they might want to do some lock'in with a "great" software, but they are not alone, and we DO have interesting, also great software in the open source community.. and amsn works for linux/windows/mac perfectly, so what's the problem? you just need to look at the right spot (right spot == http://amsn.sf.net).
Anyways, your point is good and I agree with you, but concerning the MSN alternatives for linux.. I can only say that it's hard to keep up with them, but I think linux has what it takes to crush microsoft...

KaKaRoTo Sat, 15 Jan 2005 21:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The only person I know who really uses MSN
is one of my g/f's little brothers.
He goes to private school, which may explain
why he's not using AIM, either that or all the
little kids are using MSN and I just don't know it.
Other than that, I know of one or two people who used
to have an MSN account a long time ago, as well
as an AIM account, but I can't vouch for whether
or not they use it, and how many people they know
who use it.

MSN is for Canuk's, losers here in the US and apparently
Europeans. I swear I would bitch slap anybody I knew
if they used that nudge feature, if I was forced to
use MSN. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 21:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Nobody uses ICQ anymore.ICQ used to be the king! Sat, 15 Jan 2005 21:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I use Windows 98, mainly because, to the extent of my knowledge, the small city I live in only has Internet Access for Windows. I don't care for MSN or AIM, really. My favorite IM has to be Yahoo! Messenger... Yahoo! is much more stable, faster loading than the others, cleaner features, less bloated than MSN yet less skimpy than AIM, and frankyly, Yahoo! is just all around great. I like MSN more than I like AIM because AIM is all-around faulty, if nothing else on my computer. I don't use ICQ at all because nobody else I know does. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 22:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Everyone around here seems to use MSN - I used to use Trillian/Kopete to keep track of people in other networks, but now it seems aMSN is working well enough, because the two people left using ICQ sign onto MSN using a multi-protocol client too.

That being said, I don't think anyone uses them for nudges. Personally I hate the idea; I think the open source clients that will interact adequately with the network are doing fine.
I'm not a fan of gaim at all (it just seems to irritate me when I use it) but it and Kopete are certainly adequate replacements.
aMSN's not bad either, but I prefer having the other protocols available if I want them. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 22:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The author's claims regarding file transfers are pretty silly. They work fine as long as your firewall is properly configured. If you don't know how to properly configure your firewall, you are probably not using an operating system that requires GAIM in the first place.

Ironically enough, I can't send files to my cousin who is using Windows because she hasn't properly configured her firewall, whereas I can send files to my buddy running Ubuntu just fine.

I think the only real area where Linux could be in trouble with MSN is webcam support. I hope parity is achieved in this space in short order. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 22:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Almost always with my friends who I talk to who use windows, I try and prompt them to switch from whatever im they are using to gaim.

Gaim supports almost every popular protocol and is a very nice client.

Once they are using gaim and like it, I slowly prod them into signing up for a jabber account (through gaim, very simple), and then proceed to talk to them purely on jabber. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 22:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "I don't see such innovations in jabber or open source clients"

For a start, people in this thread rather misunderstand Jabber - it's not really in this market, it's competing with SIP/SIMPLE as a messaging *framework*. Large corporations are deploying their own IM systems in an attempt to get rid of the use of public clients on internal networks for company business, and Jabber gets a lot of interest in that area (though the competition is pretty fierce). AFAIK, the people who developed Jabber never intended it to be a large network to compete with MSN, AIM, ICQ etc.

And besides, gaim has plenty of features I don't see in MSN. Tabs, for a start. Aliases (it's *so* nice to talk to 'Bob' and not 'stupid name bob created today and will change tomorrow so you don't know who the hell it is oh and it's ridiculously, hideously long and has leet characters in it'). It tells you whether other people have you on your contact list, which is great. And a simple, efficient, quick plugin system, which allows you to have *far* more elegant notification than I've seen in any proprietary client (with MSN it can either be hideously intrusive or nothing - with gaim's notification plugin, the window title gets an asterisk prepended when there's a new unread message. Simple, elegant, non-intrusive.) Had enough yet? Sat, 15 Jan 2005 22:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Conversion to something that doesn't support webcam? Sat, 15 Jan 2005 22:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? My post above should read 'their contact list', not 'your contact list', sorry. And for the guy on Windows 98 - there's no such thing as an internet connection only for a certain OS. No matter whether you're on dial-up, ADSL, ISDN, cable or whatever, you can use Linux and get online. Your ISP may not *support* you running Linux, but it will work, and they'll be happy to take your money so long as you don't call them for tech support. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 22:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Does anyone know of an open library that supports msn,aim,yahoo etc?

It would be better for the open source community if the developers of gaim or kopete separated the protocol and messaging functions from the gui.

This would enable others who may not be interested in reverse engineering to do their own front ends. Perhaps some of them would make applications that redefine how we think about messaging.

BTW: I have not heard of a single person in Norway that doesn't use MSN :-) Sat, 15 Jan 2005 23:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I used to use MSN until around a year ago, since i had most of my friends there, and when i saw articles on how Yahoo Messenger was so common in my country (Romania) i didn't really believe them.

After using the yahoo messenger, i can say i like it far more than the msn one, i like the interface better, the smileys are great, the buzz in the new yahoo 6 is also sweet, and i don't have an annoying banner add like i do in MSN. And secondly nowadays i only have around 3 friends on msn, mostly from abroad, except them, all of my friends are on yahoo, it really is very popular here.

Oh, and msn 7 beta isn't much good either, it still fails to match yahoo in my opinion, and the fact that if offers you to BUY smileys and themes for 1.5-3 dollars, i'd say it's either hillarious, or very, very sad, though all truth be told, there has to be some demand for it, it wouldn't appear from the blue. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 23:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Would everyone quit bitching about how ugly GAIM is and start using AMSN if u dont like it? It looks very good, supports nudges with an add-on, supports buddy pics (receiving and sending), does file transfer pretty good and although it doesn't yet have audio or video, it is being worked on (as a free as in freedom add-on)

So instead of trying 1 program and sitting there bitching about how the interfaces on all OS programs sucks, why not try some of the others? That would be like trying Acrobat Reader 5 for Linux and then saying that all proprietary applications on Linux suck. Sat, 15 Jan 2005 23:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? This sound more of the Open Source advocates griping about all things Microsoft. I gotta question for ya, whats so bad about Messenger besides the fact it isnt Open Source? It works well and does what its supposed to do, send IM's. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 01:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Actually audio/video is supported in amsn, however it is currently being overhauled so that it will work much better. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 01:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? as far as i know, im an asian, YM is the most used messenger here.. not msn not aim.. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 02:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? this thread is getting huge, but just to state my point here it goes another post

the only thing i miss in the floss alternatives to msn, even on the protocol specific ones like amsn, is the ability to use a whiteboard

I dont care about the webcam, the microphone, the file transfering.. for that theres alternatives

What i would rather love to see is a way to co-work with others at the easy of drawing diagrams/concepts with the mouse

or just to flirt that special girl with love signs... Sun, 16 Jan 2005 02:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? For disclosure, I work for Microsoft. I don't work on any kind of Messenger-related product, though. Here's my two cents.

The term "lock-in" is kind of silly, given the number of freely available instant-messaging alternatives. I use MSN, Yahoo, and AIM a fair bit. I've also tried stuff like Trillian. There are a lot of things that I like about MSN -- and a lot that I don't like. Let's start with the things that I don't like...

* I don't like the fact that I can't delete old contacts that may still have a reference to my email address. That's really a pain.

* I don't like having a hard-wired minimum app size; that is, the app won't let me shrink it below a certain size because it's reserving real estate for buttons, pictures, and other chrome.

* Although it may be useful for some folks who use a single computer, I haven't associated my Windows login with my Passport because I have multiple Passports (work, home, etc). It doesn't make sense for me to associate one.

Here's what I like about MSN Messenger...

* It's built-in. No need to forage for another client. Convenient when using my Mom's computer -- because I just don't want to install anything else on it.

* I like having the installable emoticons (although I rarely use them).

* I like the whiteboard. Useful for collaboration.

* I like the integration with Hotmail. Nice to be notified when mail comes in.

Many of the other IM clients offer similar features. I really don't have a favorite. It's kind of inconvenient to have to hop around between them, depending on what your friends use. Would be nice to have an uber-IM client that spans all networks.

Look, I know that many of you think that MS is the Evil Empire. But I think you'd be surprised at how receptive teams around MS are to both negative and positive feedback from people just like you. This whole FOSS versus closed-source thing has gotten pretty boring. It's software, not a cure for cancer. If you haven't done so, I'd encourage you to consider giving feedback; if not for you, then for your Mom's sake. ;-)

Take care. And happy computing...

-Tom Sun, 16 Jan 2005 03:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hi,
about the whiteboard, I have 2 things to tell you, first, noone ever asked about the whiteboard, second, the beauty of OSS is that if you like that feature so much you might be able to help us and add support for it...
anyways, the second thing I wanted to say is that, easier than the whiteboard, there are those ink messages you can send, you can try InfoPenMSN for windows, it's a plugin to draw ink messages (handwrite) in msn, we are able to send/receive those messages but only when we have a png/gif image sent, but official msn uses ISF (Ink Serialized Format), and it's their own file format, no specifications everywhere, the only way to do it is to use microsoft's SDK, which is impossible in linux, I'm currently (that's what I did all day long today actually) trying to reverse engineer that format, reading windows dll code in assembly and trying to figure it all out.. not easy, and that's where the original topic comes again, Microsoft released their ISF format giving you acces to it only through their API/SDK which means you can't use it anywhere... that's the real lock'in.. it's not about a "killer app" in windows and a "bad UI" in linux..

KaKaRoTo Sun, 16 Jan 2005 03:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I think the main problem with Gaim is that it is not as intergrated into Gnome as MSN. You must have noticed that starting OE6 always opens MSN and when you are logged on to MSN, OE6 automatically shows tbe presence info of all your buddies.

However, works has been done in this regard, with the gevolution plugin (address book intergration), galago (presence handling. freedesktop.org) and the recent work on Gnoem HIG compliance and UI simplification. Hopefully, they will fix most of the bugs.

As for the UI ugliness mentioned, I must remind the author that flashy UI is *NOT* the style for gnome. Gnome is much more similar to MacOSX in this regard: instead of being flashy, the apps are more consistent in terms of UI. Just look at iTunes, it's not ugly, is it? And note that iTunes completely complies to the Apple HIG. The same goes for Gaim: its UI fits very well under Gnome (along with its subdued color palatte). However, it looks ugly under windows, because it doesn't fit into the windows environment (and its colorful palatte)

Lastly, despite the GTK+ for win bugs, MSN Filetransfer on gaim actually works. Maybe the author should evaluate gaim on gnome isntead of win32. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 04:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? if it were for Patchou @ msgplus.net MSN messenger would be Dull an Borring IM Client, if it werent for People Being able to make Skins for MSN messenger it'd be Borring, Nudges, there USELESS, what does Microsoft think we all are?.. Kiddies? an there ya have Winks, again why do we need those resourced Hungry things for? we dont, we aint kiddies, i like Gaim, coz its simple an no BLOAT, File sends an recieving files work for me Perfectly, Sun, 16 Jan 2005 05:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Doesn't realy matter that much when it's banner/adfree. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 06:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? first off:
I think everyone should use what they would like to use.
It is not 'our' (for I don't feel me as a member of the linux community, even though I have used it for many years) task to give every audience exactly what they want to have. Of course much things that go into usuability are usefull for everyone (dbus and hal anyone?) but I think full screen flash messages or shaking others IM windows really don't fit linux. And I for one can really live without people who want to know why their window doesn't shake in gaim (and the many many other questions they'll ask in the way we all hate).
And as I speak of gaim, I don't think flashyness would fit it, gnome is simplistic, easy to use (as far as linux desktops go) but anything but flashy. I like gaims interface, I didn't at first but if you look at it it all makes sense and is -very- easy to use, 'modern' interfaces like MSN or newer ICQ are a nightmare if you ask me. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 07:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I reckon nudging will abused a lot and then the spammers will start using it too. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 08:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree with author. M$ did the same (embed in Windows) with Internet Explorer (result: Netscape died), with Windows Media Player (Real and others are dying) and now with Messenger.

And you don't see the complete and utter suckiness of Netscape (at the time) and Real (pretty much anytime) to be at all related to this ? Sun, 16 Jan 2005 10:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm from europe and I don't have a msn account. I even don't know a single person who has. And of course I got friends and I'm under 30. I even have a job in an IT company. Nobody there has a msn account too. In my university I also don't know anyone with a msn account.

Maybe in your little world everyone uses msn, but msn is _not_ popular in europe. I know more people using icq, I know more people using jabber, I even know more people using aim (at least I know exactly one person using AIM...)

and by the way... who needs anything else than text-messaging and maybe filetransfer from a IM?

red Sun, 16 Jan 2005 12:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? FUCK MICROSOFT.... Sun, 16 Jan 2005 12:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? And you don't see the complete and utter suckiness of Netscape (at the time) and Real (pretty much anytime) to be at all related to this ?


Exactly. Netscape 4.x sucked badly. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 13:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "IM market here is dominated by 3 Polish IMs: Gadu Gadu, Tlen and WP Contact."

Yeah, but Tlen & WP Contat are just a Jabber services. You can connect to WP server with PSI/Gaim. Tlen is closed, but it's still just modded Jabber. GaduGadu is lames IM protocol ever released. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 14:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Wow, you must be dumb..
So the author lvies in a small world and you don't???
Stop saying foolish stuff, just because you don't know anyone that has "MSN" doesn't mean whole europe doesn't..

Well ok then let me be follish:
Shiit you must be living in a small town without internet... And you say your younger than 30, then your lyieng most diffently! You must be 50 or older, cause even my dentist has "MSN" and his well over 40.

I actually know 2 persons that don't have "MSN". And I have 60 close friends on my "MSN" list, 16 from my work and 5 from my school. And don't know a single one using ICQ or anyother!

So if it is like this for me, does it mean that whole europe is like me??? NOOO but damn it! Open your eyes!
Have you seen vanilla sky? are you living in a dream world where linux and open source applications has 100% of the market?

Open your eyes!
And YES people I know stupid/smart/usual people use windows for mainly this: "MSN" "WINAMP/Window media player" "MS OFFICE" and "INTERNET EXPLORER".. And honestly I can't recommend any other applications nor OS than what they already have cause I know if they change to linux they will get much more troubles!!

I use Gentoo and I have been using it for 3 years.. Works perfectly.. But I have only recomended it for one person that I know would like it.. 99% of all people (that I know of) love windows and all applications tied with windows!
They love microsoft!

I personally don't have anything against any os nor application.. I only hate people like you and all other narrowminded blind people!!

I really don't want to hate, but when I read this kinda bullshit I get mad and angry!!

And ok PEOPLE!! YOU DON'T LIKE MS, THEN DON'T USE IT! PLEASE uninstall it and unplug yourself from the rest of the world!

or don't hate and instlal both OS's and use them for what they are!

ok and now forget my post and be as your always been.. cause I know after I typed all this every one will still be hating.. and I know I can't change people. .I am not god, but I wish to god that he can solves this anti everything campaing narrow minded people have! Sun, 16 Jan 2005 14:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I've done work for several netcafes here in Rotterdam, NL, and I can vouch that about 90% of the clientale who use any form of instant messaging prefer to use MSN.

From young people to old, MSN is widely used. It seems to be a favorite choice here. I begrudgingly use it myself, to communicate with my family back in Canada, although I prefer BeShare.

Blatant advertising plug: For MSN fans who use BeOS/Haiku, check out the upcoming Bme project as well.

Back to my main point. From my perspective, I have seen a lot of MSN use in the Netherlands. I don't know why, but that's what I've seen over the past few years.

-Chris Simmons,
Haiku News,
http://haikunews.org Sun, 16 Jan 2005 15:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Editors: could you remove/edit my double posting of my site, and this post too? Thanx.

-C Sun, 16 Jan 2005 15:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? MSN has a good GUI. No more no less. Everybody here in the Philippines uses Yahoo! Messenger. Only few people use the MSNM. YIM is simpler and easier to use than MSN. Yahoo also runs faster, with more features and more reliable than MSN. With the 250mb mail box, it's a sure win. MSN Hotmail already announced their 250mb storage for each account but until now my account is still in 2mb. Why is that upgrading all mailboxs is taking them so long while Yahoo! already upgraded their system twice (100mb and 250mb) and they almost finished upgrading it in less than 2 weeks. Not to mention, almost 100% of all cybercafes here have YIM installed but not MSN (Majority of the OS here is Windows 98). Sun, 16 Jan 2005 16:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? MSN is the best messenger regardless of your negativism

Regardless of your opinions, the truth is that most of us want to use Windows and we enjoy full feature instant messengers such as MSN Messenger. Just because you are anti-Microsoft does not mean the whole world has to be, while I agree that open source may have some advantages, it also has disadvantages.

Any product could be targeted for security flaws, it just happens that Microsoft is the most popular, when everyone is concentrated on the same platform they will find flaws, but if hackers concentrated their efforts on open source OS and Apps they would more flaws than they've found on Microsoft products.

While Nudge and Blinks are not appealing to you, they are to most of us, but it's like everything else, I may not like all of the features on my car, or my cell phone, but these products have most of the features I want.

I think all of you should just accept that companies like Microsoft are innovating software, and why hasn't open source gotten there? Lack of innovation, I'm not against open source, but that does not mean I have to pick on the leader and be anti-leader, instead let's be a leader and accept their credits, when open source is a true innovator, then it will be able to compete against companies like Microsoft.

Just a regular guy Sun, 16 Jan 2005 17:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "While Nudge and Blinks are not appealing to you, they are to most of us, but it's like everything else, I may not like all of the features on my car, or my cell phone, but these products have most of the features I want."

Leads to a very important question - can you turn nudging _off_ in the new MSN? If so, then fine, I agree (and BTW, I'm sure the nudging will be implemented in gaim via a plugin extremely soon, as it can hardly be a very complicated system - it'll just be a simple code sent during the conversation most likely, all a gaim plugin has to do is pickup that code and do with it). If not, your analogy is flawed; you yourself *choose* whether or not to use all the features on your phone / car, but you DON'T choose whether other people nudge your windows or not. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 18:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Actually, thinking about it some more, it's obvious that a lot of the criticism here is massively wrong-headed. This is how things have gone - a new MSN Messenger comes out with some borderline useful 'features', and "open source" clients are bashed for 'lack of innovation'. Look! Microsoft is making all these new features, and you aren't!

That's ridiculous. Think about it for a minute. No open source messenger client owns any protocol. How could gaim implement nudging in MSN? It doesn't own the protocol. It doesn't run the servers. No other client is going to take a blind bit of notice, and implementing something in a system that only your own client understands is anathema to open source and open standards so I doubt anyone would support gaim if they decided to do that. The only significant open-source messaging *protocol* - which is the layer at which this sort of 'innovation' should take place - is Jabber, and that's just *stuffed* with interesting and innovative features...yet hardly anyone appears to use it. Open source clients do fine at innovation and design on the CLIENT level, which is after all the level they're operating on. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 18:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Yes, I have the ability to disable Nudges and Winks on MSN Messenger so other MSN users will not be able to Nudge or Wink me.

I am well aware that Microsoft is making all these new features, I'm an end user, I don't care who makes them, I want results, I want innovation, I want quality, not negativism.

Jarg Sun, 16 Jan 2005 19:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? My point is that so long as you're using MSN, Microsoft is the *only* entity that can do that on the protocol level. It's hardly fair to criticise groups who have absolutely no control over the protocol for not doing the same. All they can do is implement, or not, the features Microsoft creates. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 19:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I know, but do users really care about the server other than it being reliable? Client is all they care about really. Wow It seems more people overseas has MSN than people in the states .. odd.. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 19:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Your coneception of young people keeping with windows just because of MSN is totally wrong, I have been using Linux since I was 14 and am Currently 17. Sure MSN 7 has some annyoing features, that some love, or love to hate. Yes I dual boot XP Pro and ArchLinux, But I will not boot to windows "just because I want to get a nudge.." or send a file. I havent had a problem yet with sending a file through GAIM, even though I have an hardware Firewall with _NO_ ports open. Not ONE single port is open. I have no trobule sending files. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 19:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Actually, Yahoo IM can do Nudges. I'm not sure if anyone else is doing winks, which I really don't care about.

I'm not criticizing other developers, I'm just voicing my opinions based the criticism started in this forum.

Jarg Sun, 16 Jan 2005 20:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Thats strange Nuno. I thought sapo.pt had the largest userbase branding adsl, among other things. As far as i can see from http://mensageiro2.sapo.pt/ they are using jabber so a large part og IM users in Portugal must be jabber users :-) but maybe they dont even know they are. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 21:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? here, in the UK. MSN messenger is by far the most popular IM protocol. everyone i know, has an MSN account, and no-one uses any other kind of account. I felt i could relate to what the author was saying, I didn't move to Linux as my primary desktop system, until i had a MSN Msngr client, as whilst I was in linux, i couldn't see who was online, and therefore, wanting to drop back to Windows to check if there was anyone interesting online.

GAIM isn't too ugly, as it matches your current user-interface for your normal system, so as long as that's good, allows for more blending-in than in Windows.

Things aren't helped by Windows Messenger being _impossible_ to remove from a XP system. Which tries signing you up for a MSN account during installation. Therefore no-one really bothers with any alterniative.

As for useless features, not being able to play games the same way as MSN 7.0 will not work, until Shockwave is ported. Nudges and other parafanalia, I would hope any linux user would rise above anyway. As soon as the novelty of nudge wear's off, users are going to abuse it, then hate it. and isn't nudge kind of stacked of Yahoo anyway?

The most annoying thing I've found, is GAIM as of yet, doesn't even give text notification, when a MSN 7.0 feature is trying to be activated, like the sending of a picture, or starting a webcam, which can lead to awful confusion. Not being able to use a feature isn't a problem, but not being given an error back is. Sun, 16 Jan 2005 21:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? May be I'm becoming old ...

But, my main desktops being Unices (Linux and Solaris), sometime working on Windows, I'm another Gaim user(on all platforms including Windows).
I have accounts on AOL, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber, whatever.
Here in France with people of my age (between 25 and 35), I'm mostly using ICQ.

I certainly sometime encounter file transfer problems, but only when beeing behind a firewall (which mean most of the time but have the same problems with Yahoo messanger, ICQ, AOL).
File transfer and video through firewall are certainly killer features that would have to be replicated into free softwares.

But, I'm bored of constant troll about how to seduce regular people.
If they don't feel like using free software, I do not see any need to "save" them.

When asked for help, if it is again some Windows problems, I point to free alternative, explaining why it is better on long term and sometime on short term (with youngers, usually feeling good about beeing "rebels", I even try to explain why I feel Ms monopol is dangerous).
Then if they don't feel inclined to use free software its their choice they are informed and I don't provide extensive help.

May be, I'm just becoming asocial, but I don't need or want MSN "funky" features and text messaging is good enough for me (I hate thos pics, sounds and other disturbing thingies).

I hate proselytes and I feel free software only need to keep on being used, improve at its pace with people willing to use it.
If it is good enough people will come, if not it will shrink to a small group among which I will be.

--
(sorry I wear no beard to match the complete archetype) Sun, 16 Jan 2005 23:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? What is wrong with GAIM's interface? It is consistent with the rest of the system regardless of OS thanks to its wonderful theme support. Not to mention it is THE most configurable IM client available. If you want to download and run 6 different im clients eating away at your memory, with flashy useless features, and inconsistent user interfaces then be my guest, but don't go knocking gaim, kopete, linux, ffs, or oss just because you like the way that a buggy msn messenger beta lets you send flash cartoons and move the other users window around. thats enough to make me want to use gaim over msn right there. Mon, 17 Jan 2005 06:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I must agree with alot of the posters on this thread. I don't want a IM that gives me stupid bells and whistles. For me, IM'ing is the same as SMS. It should be plain text.

Then again, I also believe a cellphone should be just that. A phone. Nothing more. I don't need a camera, GPS, thermometer, etc, etc. I want to phone people and SMS them.

Hell, I even like links(text based browser). Mon, 17 Jan 2005 08:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I can honestly say that kopete's UI is the best I've seen in an IM program. It's like trillian (the best windows IM client by far), only integrated with KDE. It really is wonderful.
File transfer, however, is definately a problem. It works for one out of the 5 networks I use - sometimes. We really need a blitz on file transfer support, which is a pretty basic feature, rather than adding more exotic plugins or whatever. (Yes I know that some people will only work on one thing, but the Kopete core developers must know the whole application) I'm willing to try and work on it, but the way I have to fit my code into the application is confusing and (of course) underdocumented. Anyone know more about kopete and willing to help try code it? Mon, 17 Jan 2005 09:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Take a look at spyshield for MSN encryption, it works fine and is real openpgp - it's had far more analysis than gaim-encryption has, and will interoperate with Kopete with no trouble, which is nice. And I think not being able to see whether someone has blocked you is a feature Mon, 17 Jan 2005 10:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? i hate msn messenger with a passion. it isnt fast. it spawns windows like nothing. it has ads. what does it have that others dont? um, wink? give me a break. trillian 3 is one of the best chat clients out there. given a choice between a wiki of everything said in a conversation (allowing me to look far smarter then i actually am ;-) ) and a fullscreen flash animation, i would take the wikis any day.

also, this is by microsoft, they of all people should be making apps that fit in with the system. but it seems like they really dont like windows standards (which is kind of odd). why is it that ms apps look nothing like anything else, including other ms apps? and isnt it supposed to be start->program files->appname->shortcuts? they seem to be leading the crusade to trash that and make program files a real big version of the quicklaunch bar.

last but not least, do us linux users really want people who wont use an os because it doesnt have msn messenger? i mean, honestly, anyone whose primary use for a computer is to instant message people really needs to get a life, and anyone who really loves msn messenger so much shouldnt be talking on tech forums at least until they get out of highschool. Mon, 17 Jan 2005 16:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? um, how does ms make innovative software? usually they leave innovating up to the other guys. what ms does is mediocre to good (and with office, great) implementations of stuff other people have already done. great example is if you want all the features of longhorn, but dont want to wait till 2k8, pick up a mac. apple is a big idea company. google is a big idea company. microsoft leaves that kinda stuff to them, and then uses their weight of market dominance to come in and provide an integrated alternative to whatever we are talking about, usually killing the existing product.

ms is a great company for many things, but innovation is most definately not one of them. Mon, 17 Jan 2005 16:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? also, i can't help noticing how most people complain about not having completely unnecessary features like voice chat and video, but don't care about essential features like encrypted IMs...

Because for 95% of the population who use instant messenger, voice chat and video are TENFOLD more important than encryption. Reality check, please. Mon, 17 Jan 2005 19:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? In my environment only women are using msn messenger.. all the other are using icq.. and guess why.. i never had a problem connecting to icq in the past 6 or even more years.. msn sometimes has downtimes and lacks... i have never used a msn messenger before. I ever used an alternative client.. for now i use jabber with an msn transport.. most of my friends accept that i cannot see their avatars and that stuff.. even that i cannot use the crappy file transport is accepted.. so there's no reason to blame the alternative clients.. u just have to arrange yourself and explain the situation to ur friends.. Mon, 17 Jan 2005 22:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? and I'm not referring to MSN chat, but the responses to the article.

While the source code of their chat program is indeed closed, the protocol is not...

How many of you remember the AIM/Y!/ICQ going nutzo and blocking out third party chat programs from access? AOL got so active in trying to shut out third party clients that in protest people even coded site detection into their sites to block AOL users from access, or at the least put up a "Warning" page about the evils of AOL...

About a year and a half ago MSN upgraded their chat protocol - Before they did so they went out of their way to share details with the makers of programs like Trillian and GAIM to make sure nobody using MSN would be left behind so long as they updated to the latest software. Have AIM, Y! or ICQ ever gone to such lengths? No, they have barely begrudgingly given up their activities to lock out third party clients altogether!

Just recently Trillian released version 3, which does most of the bells and whistles of MSN 7 that matter (audio, video chat)... HOW? Simple, Microsoft shared the protocol info with the coders of trillian just as they did a year and a half ago when they retired the 'legacy' protocol.

MSN's chat department has been better than any other protocol in supporting third party clients, anybody who says otherwise obviously hasn't been paying attention the past five years. Tue, 18 Jan 2005 02:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Since when did M$ contact Gaim team to make sure they wouldn't be left behind? In fact, their move of upgrading their protocol to MSNP 8 and plus was supposed to block 3rd party clients.
They _allowed_ Trillian to use their protocol because they probably pay full royalties to them.
"Microsoft disclosed version 2 (MSNP2) to developers in 1999 in an Internet Draft, but never released versions 8, 9, 10 or 11 to public" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Messenger#Protocol
where were YOU during those past five years?

now for your last point: Jabber is an open standard. so this means developers can implement the protocol as needed/wanted and it is currently supported on multiple platforms. they offer the good IM features of MSN plus encryption, plus a very special feature that permits using the server to connect to another IM protocol. Tue, 18 Jan 2005 09:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments