I installed Windows Live Messenger yesterday. It didn't take me much time to think of getting back to MSN Messenger 7.5. A lot of features have been added, but also, some features have been removed, which I think, are more important than the added ones.

Below is a list of features added to the new Windows Live Messenger, and a list of things that made me think of going back to MSN Messenger 7.5

Added features:
1. Searching the contact list. A good way for quickly locating your contacts if you have a lengthy contact list.
2. A new look. You can choose the color theme of the main window and chat windows.
3. Shared folders. The ability to share folders with your contacts. It's an improvement on the file transfer in MSN Messenger.
4. A free antivirus scanner for the file transfer feature.
5. The ability to send messages to your offline contacts. This is a really great feature, something that was missing in previous versions of MSN Messenger.

Annoying things:
1. You can't know the exact status of the contacts by looking at the contacts window. It's either online, or not online. To know the exact status of your contact, you have to hover over his/her nickname.
2. The nice feature of displaying the display picture of the contact instead of the MSN icon in the contact list is not there any more. To see what display picture your contact has, you have to either hover over the contact, or open a chat window with him/her.
3. You can no longer see the email of your contact by hovering over the nickname in the contacts window. Displaying the email when you hover over the nickname is really useful, especially when you have contacts that change their nicknames frequently.
4. Hovering over the contact will set focus on that contact and will enlarge the display so how more info. This "feature" is really annoying, and distracting. You can disable it though from the options window, but by doing so, you won't be able to see the display picture of your contact unless you open a chat window with the contact. Same goes to the status of the contact.

These are the things that I found during the first couple of days of using Windows Live Messenger. Too bad it took me so little time to make me think of getting back to the good old MSN Messenger.