A day into re-configuring my computer and re-installing all the main development applications I use and I've come across my first "the bad", with a potential to also be one of "the ugly". Messaging.
Since some kind of Windows Messenger client has been pretty ubiquitous with Windows starting with XP we have come to enjoy the convenience of the client around the office. When lunch time comes we pull together a quick multi-person chat and place our order. When someone wants to share a screen shot or a file, it's a simple drag-and-drop operation and then chat a little about what you are both looking at.
From time to time Microsoft's messenger servers are not available and over a month ago they were doing something very odd that was killing not only Messenger sessions but computer performance on a few computers at the office. Some people worked around the issue by using the Web interface for the day or two of trouble. Others just shutdown messenger during the event. I tried third-party clients and found none of them to be affected. (This lead me to believe the issue was with some advertisement being sent to the client.) These issues make me occasionally dream of a local messaging service, either using a peer to peer local network auto-discovery system or an XMMP based system hosted with our mail server. The rest of the time Live Messenger serves us well.
The Windows Store Messenger app has not served me well. It all started out looking simple enough. A purple rectangle on the Start screen says Messaging. Giving it my Windows Live ID pulled in all my Live Messenger contacts into People and I could chat. Success, but it was short lived.
When the call for lunch came, I didn't get a single message. Several tests showed that I no longer get messages that are sent to multiple recipients and I can't figure out how to invite multiple contacts into a conversation that I start. No soup for me I guess.
Later in the day one of my co-workers seemed to start babbling out of context. I couldn't figure out what in the world they were talking about. Finally they asked about the screen shot they had started the conversation off with. I never received it, or even a notification that one was sent and failed. Now I have to watch for this and warn them that the Microsoft Windows 8 Store Messaging App is even more gimped than the third-party program I was previously using.
Finally, and most troublesome, if I miss the noise and the little alert text that flashes into Desktop mode for a moment, and don't occasionally switch to the Messaging app, I have no idea that people have sent me something. I miss my glowing toolbar button!
I have searched, so far in vain, for a reason or a fix or a replacement. I think I can install the old Live Messenger client in Desktop mode, but people complain about getting duplicate sign-in notifications a lot going that route.
I wonder if Microsoft even cares about the feature drop, seeings as they seem intent on pulling the plug on the Messenger client anyway.
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