Finally .. its going to be release on the 20th of June , thats like today for me. But the site ment to provide this download isnt updated yet my M$...

Link : Windows Live Messenger 8 Download OR ALTERNATE Site

Either of which are not functional as i post. Just have to wait and see i guess

News Confirmed by the Official WLM Blog.

Regards
Dhanesh.

Yay! I just downloaded it a few minutes ago, and I must say I was definately impressed! Really great new features from what I've seen so far (in the last hour or so), and here are some of my faves:

• Now when you've scrolled up in a conversation window but someone sends you a message it doesn't scroll down automatically, but the scroll to the bottom button (also new) flashes. I've been waiting for this for so long!
• Giving nicknames to people on your contact list. This is really great! I finally don't have to use MSN Plus! (which doesn't support Live yet, BTW) to do this. This feature lets you give your own names to your contacts, so you won't have to remember who "Right on Time" is anymore, as he'll appear as "Marco" ().
• Haven't really had a chance to check out the shared folders (or whatever it's called in English... I'm using the Hebrew interface), but it seems promising. It lets you create share folders with specific contacts, and then every file you put in that folder is accessable by that contact. I can't really think of a reason to use this instead of normal file sharing (which is still slow... ), but whatever.

Besides all those, the Messenger interface just got even better! It's really appealing and easy to use, and now it's so easy to manage your contact list. You also have a little search bar above the list to skim the list down to a few contacts, just like in iTunes, for those of us with bombastic contact lists.

I tried GTalk a few days ago, but something was definately missing there (maybe RTL support... ), so I'm going to be sticking to Microsoft's Messenger for the time being, especially with the whole Live thing now.

I must say I look forward to trying this out... I've always been bitter about msn because everyone I know uses it and I've never loved it (various feature annoyances, various changes I disagreed with, various connection drop issues, etc) but this looks like a solid update. I know I'm stuck using it so might as well get the best of it right?

The new look seems pretty slick (I don't like the look of... whatever version I have now) and the tweaked features for having shared folders and stuff seems cool... will be useful for my buddies when I get back to my university classes to share resources in one of those folders maybe.

All in all its the type of update I like... eye candy, fixed features, new features, but nothing so dramatic that it seems like a totally dif program. At least thats the feel I get, I'll test it tonight hopefully and letcha all know.

Out of this the shared folder thing is TOTAL CRAP. The transfer is infamously slow MSN transfer - and for every single contact you need to create a shared folder. Which means, if you wanted to share a file with 5 of your friends, you're to drop that file into all 5 shared folders. Waste of time - waste of diskspace and wastage of internet hours. Worthless !!!

I prefer to stay with an older version or use Google Talk once they have fixed it up a bit.

However that fix they made for it not scrolling down is one of the most annoying things I found with the older versions...

Haha yea, the shared folders thing turned out to be pointless, ah well. It seems to run more stably on my system and that was the main thing I was looking for. Hopefully it does the opposite on all my friends' systems and it'll piss them off enough to switch to any other chat prog. Alas, that wont happen, but I can dream.

But yea, most of the features implemented properly don't affect me at all it turns out, and after using it awhile I don't prefer the look haha. Ah well.

The shared folders feature might be all right to share a few certain things with a specific person but they really should have made it possible to merge priviliges with multiple contacts for easier and less annoying access to the same files.

I haven't tryed it as of yet, i'm kind of afraid it's going to bump off my old version which it probably will, is the GUI even any better then the old one?

It's...different. I can see why alot of people would like it more... hell I thought I would. Seems alot smoother and shinier, but I dont know. Just rubs me the wrong way in actuality I guess. Some of the layouts of things are better IMO but its probably something you'd need to try to know for sure.

Also a feature I AM looking forward to that I forgot about was the fact that they are going to be giving msn yahoo messenger support...Usually I dont use multiple client programs since they often lose functionality but if they can merge in Yahoo! messenger and all its features into msn, thats ones less program for me to worry about running which would be awesome.

Wonder if they will include the emoticons aswell lol those emoticons were kick arse!

The only reason I would try this is because of the window scrolling bug that they fixed (Though they probably consider it a feature) so I might just have to grab it tomorrow when I get up.

I think there isn't too much added overall. all i pretty much use it for is instant messaging but some of the features are nice such as the improved looks and offline messages, the sharing folders are good for just 2 way sharing but if you need to share with more people it's hopeless, otherwise it's not a bad update. I'll be looking forward to the new messenger plus which adds a hell of a lot of features that messenger is lacking. You can check it out at www.msgplus.net

-HellFire