Shoutbox

is there a way (like extension) for live messenger to show a mini-display picture next to your buddy's name on the buddy list like in 7.5 when you made the icons large?

You can click on the icon and click 'show Details' which shows their display picture.

Or if you want the smaller ones, you can use download Mess Patch and select it, but you can no longer do that with WLM (without a patch).