quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised here
When there is a (ref:contacts) cache it will use it (ref:Messenger) in order to let you sign in faster and reduce the net traffic upon signing in. When people update their screen name, the new name will be stored in the cache.
That is the only reason for the contacts cache being there, which was introduced in WLM8.
Which also explains the reason why signing in in WLM8 for the very first time will take longer, since WLM then creates the cache; And in order to do that it needs to retrieve all the contact names from the servers.
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