I got an invite to try out the Windows Liveâ„¢ Messenger beta. Finally we can chat while appearing offline and also send offline messages. These two features were sadly missing from previous MSN messenger versions and I’m happy it has finally been incorporated.

Windows Live Messenger looks just about ok at first glance, nothing great that wasnt available elsewhere earlier. The ads are quite annoying though and another annoying feature is when I change my status to Appear Offline, all my conversation windows are closed automatically. This means that if I want to continue chatting with my friends after changing status to appear offline, I need to reopen a chat window with them. And finally when both my friend and I appear offline, we weren’t able to chat! We only got each other’s messages after we changed our status back to Online. I hope Microsoft resolves these issues before the final release.

I’ve also got the Windows Liveâ„¢ Mail beta invite and will post about it soon.