quote:
Originally posted by murko
About the first part, its pretty obvious this is only a way to more or less "force us" to use the latter versions. I mean any security issues has to be fixable right? Are they just getting tired of fixing old versions? They still put out fixes for Win 95 
Sorry but you are wrong.
When Microsoft says there is an important security fix they mean it. They never ever joke about that.
Second, yes, they did fix the security issue in Windows Live Messenger 2009, hence the new version!
As for MSN Messenger. Because of the unique setup of Messenger, this sometimes means that it can not be fix in older versions without completely upgrading to a newer version.
Messenger is not a simple standalone program. It very intensivly uses the internet and there are a lot of things going on between Messenger and the Messenger servers in order to let it do what it does. Sometimes, if a security issue is discovered in the (old) protocol for example, it can not always be solved by simply applying some small fixes in just the code.
Together with that, yes, they are gradually stopping support for older versions. That is something they (and other companies) always have done. It takes a lot of people to maintain a single version. It takes twice that much people and money to constantly maintain and fix two versions. It makes little to no sense to have a full blown team constantly working on a depricted, already cripple and bug riddled version.
Almost everybody hates it when a forced upgrade is done. But the fact remains that when a forced upgrade is done it is with very good reasons and almost always involves big security issues.
The new version isn't that bad at all. Yes it looks a bit different, but the thing most people complain about is actually the change itself, not much else. You see this happening everytime a new version comes out. (It is also similar to the upgrade from win98 to XP, from XP to Vista, etc). Yet, after a while everybody has accepted it and even nobody wants to go back! The same happens with Messenger. Everybody complained after the change from 6.x to 7.x. But after a while nobody complained anymore and actually loved it. Again the same with 7.x to 8.x, etc...
Many people simply hate changing stuff which, at the surface, works for them. But that does not mean that under the hood a lot of things are malfunctioning. Of course, people don't see this.
Anyways... point is: there is a very good (security) reason for the upgrade...
Trying to trick Messenger to keep on using the old version will only backfire at you later on. In fact, it actually makes it much harder to fix bugs! So you are actually also damaging other people.
I'll sush now...
/ 
