All is not right in the township of Window Live Messenger 9, and it seems like an unresponsive software development team has earned the wrath of it's own beta testing community. Originally released in November 2007, the new version of Messenger promised a couple of cool enhancements to the current functionality (like being able to sign in to 4 locations at once, displaying URLs in current status) and a bunch that would really grind my gears (customized sounds for sign-in, animated display pictures).Since then, tons of great suggestions from the community have been passed on (think tabbed messaging), bugs are being ignored or 'postponed' (this means ignored, only written differently) and 4 months has passed without a peep from Microsoft. What has really riled up the mob is the fact that Microsoft has started a public beta, and then proceeded to completely ignore all comments the willing testers make. As one tester aptly put it:
"It's obvious that when you start these programs, that you already have a clear image of what you want and don't want to implement into the client, so why bother? And why waste our time?"
Personally, I gave up on Messenger a long time ago. Here's the hot tip: if all your buddies are still lingering on MSN, give one of the multi-protocol IM programs like Adium (Mac) or Trillian (PC) a go. Either that, or get new buddies. Those guys are jerks, anyway.
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