Like a lot of you... I've used MSN for a LONG time!
Well... over that time, I've found many things that I found useful in say other instant messenging programs... that MSN was lacking.
To start off with... Most of you have already pointed out, the Away message.
Even though MSN Plus! Does have the ability to do so, it is rather flawed in the sense that it can become too frequent in its appearance than it really has to be.
The logging, somethign again MSN Plus! brought in.... Needs to be a default.
Now one of the MAIN things that have bugged me since i got MSN plus! to resolve the above... was that If i set the status to say 'appear offline'.... Then I reconnected to MSN, It would show as Online. Now the whole idea of appearing offline is to say hide from someone/or everyone for privacy and so on.
So then it should remain that in the event of someone being disconnected... or like me in England, being disconnected from the ISP every 2 hours. Then if i reconnect, it comes on as 'online' ... even if you quickly go offline.... people will still know that you have been online... and gone. Not a nice thought
I think there also needs to be some better way of stopping the email messages. Even though I turned the notifier off... I find some of the spam messeges STILL bring up a email notifier 'bubble'.
MSN could become VERY popular if it supported offline messages too!
Now another important thing for me, is the ability for MSN to know when there is no connection. For a independant computer with a modem it is easy for MSN to know when there is no connection, when the ISP DUN is dropped, so is the MSN connection.
However, on ICS, client machines cant 'tell' that there has been a loss of connection on the main machine... Which then shows MSN as 'online' however its NOT. Then when you double click on a user, it quickly jumps to offline. I think this needs to be fixed.
Other than that, I'm very pleased with the program. Although the above points are more off the conventional ICQ type features.. they are useful! And if they could be implemented without MSN becoming a memory hog... such as ICQ... then i think a lot of people would benefit... especially those who use instant messenger programs such as MSN on an every day basis.
The End