Shoutbox

-And without microsoft there would be less competition, not more. 

¿Does the word 'antitrust' or 'monopoly' mean something (apart from the dice game)?

-In fact, it encourages other companies to work hard to compete with them.

Netscape, by example... About the MAC thing... where did windows come from, you say ?

Anyway, MS programmers are not to blame, they're nice workers... the $$$ guys are the ones I can't swallow.

I agree totally, microsoft created this program and distrubuted it for free, they're only trying to keep their piece of the pie and 'own' what they've generously created

After reading your article I freaked! I love using msn messenger, but I can't afford to pay. so I e-mailed  "MSN Messenger Support" @ Microsoft and they had this to say...

[Start]
Hello,

Thank you for writing to MSN Messenger Service.

This is Christian and I am writing in response to your inquiry regarding MSN
Messenger.

There are no present plans for MSN Messenger to be subscription-based. I believe
that you are referring to MSN Chat's planned shutdown of its services this
October. No, MSN Messenger is a different service from MSN Chat and will not be
affected at all. You can still use MSN Messenger's free service to "chat" online
with your contacts even after this date.

For more information on this news, please visit MSNBC News or go to:
     http://www.msnbc.com/news/970970.asp

Sincerely,         
         
Christian       
MSN Messenger Support
[end]

So you see MSN Messenger is and will still be Free! Yay!

From what I read it seemed like you were saying they were going to charge money as seen here --->

"A newspaper costs 1 dollar, do you know how much it costs to buy, maintain and keep running the several monstrous servers of the MSN Messenger network? can you beging to imagine how many terabytes of bandwidth is necessary every week to let hundreds of millions of users connect to the service? how could some people dare beginning to say that this is a greedy act from Microsoft? being the manager of the Messenger team I would be completely amazed to read what I read on the article posted on mess.be. Aren't these people ashamed of what they are trying to do? they well know that it's very easy to blame Microsoft, saying things like "we will probably have to pass on the fees to our users", of course, I can already picture the news on their web site "our formerly free software now costs $10, it's not our fault, we are not earning anything from this, all the money goes directly into the pockets of uncle Bill. Click here to send a complaint to the MSN team and help us restore a free Messenger network!"."

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dreamcast God
After reading your article I freaked! I love using msn messenger, but I can't afford to pay.

---

*blinks*
uh..... unless im very much mistaken.... is it not just that 3rd party peeps such as Trillian will have to pay!?

yes, it's only about third party software, Microsoft has no plan to ask money for the main MSN Messenger service, don't worry. What I meant in my article was that Messenger costs Microsoft a lot of money to operate and the only way for them to get something back if is you use their client (MSN Messenger) as it displays all kinds of advertisement amd services. If you use a third party client, they have no more benefit so they have to find a way not to lose money ot, at least, a way to control what's going on on their network (what they are going to charge companies like Trillian really doesn't reflect their cost).

I just wanted to say... I diden't read the entire artical.  But I do understand where Microsoft is coming from, if someone accessed your system 20 million times a day without your permission... woulden't you be a bit pissed off too?

I think Patchou should work together with microsoft, possably devlop a MSN Messenger version with all the features that MSN Plus has...?  Considering there is probaly over a 50 million users using MSN Plus today!

I think what Microsoft is doing is right... it's there right to decide who get's access anyways.

That's my opinion.