An Overview of Windows Messenger

Windows Messenger is an online, real-time communication program that lets you talk with friends and coworkers across the house or across the world, over the Internet. For starters, Windows Messenger lets you keep a list of contactscoworkers or friends with whom you're interested in communicatingand lets you know which are online at any given time. When they're online, you can type messages which appear instantly on your contacts' screens.

Depending on your interest and the speed of your Internet connection you can also communicate by voice, and even use two-way video so you can see as well as talk to each other. You can share a virtual electronic "whiteboard" or chalkboard to make collaborative drawings, or work interactively with a program, using a feature called Application Sharing. All of these capabilities are part of Windows Messenger.

NOTE

Many businesses use NetMeeting, an older Microsoft program with these same features. If your organization uses NetMeeting, see "What About NetMeeting?" later in this chapter.

Messaging has become very popular in the business world as a way to communicate with coworkers, to reduce travel costs through videoconferencing, and to give demonstrations and customer support. It can connect the office and wired-network world with specially enabled cell phones and wireless personal organizers. And, messaging also is a great way to stay in touch with friends and family.

Before we get into these details, though, we should talk a bit about the whole phenomenon of messaging itself.

What Is Messaging, Anyway?

Messaging fills a niche somewhere between email and the telephone. Like email, it can travel anywhere around the globe, essentially for free. Unlike email, though, it requires you and the person you're communicating with to be online at the same time. Like the telephone, it's immediate, interactive, and conversational. But unlike the telephone, it doesn't have to occupy your full attentionwith it, you can carry on several conversations at once, or you can divide your attention between a conversation and other work.

Messaging has been around since the early 1980s when the first computer networks and "bulletin board" computer systems appeared. When the Internet became a public phenomenon, programs like IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and ICQ ("I seek you") became popular. But messaging really took off as America Online soared in popularity, and today millions of people, both AOL subscribers and non-subscribers alike use AOL's "Instant Messenger" service. Microsoft, which may join revolutions late but always brings bigger guns, came up with several attempts to move into the field: Microsoft Chat, then NetMeeting, and now Windows Messenger.

NOTE

Windows Messenger is one of the programs that got Microsoft in some anti-competitive hot water a few years ago, so it's now one of the programs that can be enabled, disabled, or hidden by vendors and by you. If you've just purchased a new computer, you might find that the manufacturer hid Windows Messenger and replaced it with another product. If you want to use Windows Messenger and find that it's not on your Start menu, just click Start, All Programs, Set Program Access and Defaults. Click Custom, and enable access to Windows Messenger.

You can and should try different chat programs; do a survey of your friends, coworkers, or family, and select the one or two that most of them are using. If you find the need to communicate with people on different systems, be sure to read the last section in this chapter.

Also, you'll see references to the ".NET Messenger Service." That's the technology and user directory behind both Windows Messenger and MSN Messenger.

What Windows Messenger Can and Can't Do

Messenger has several options for communicating. You can choose any or all of them, so you can start out with the simple stuff and work your way up, if you want. With Messenger and an Internet connection, you can

• Type text messages.

• Communicate with voice and video even over a dial-up Internet connection. (It's not quite TV quality but you can, say, stick your tongue out at someone, and within a few seconds, they'll more likely than not be able to tell.) Over a cable or DSL connection or a corporate LAN, you can get up to 15 video frames per second, which is nearly TV quality, with excellent voice quality.

• Receive video and sound even if you don't have a camera or microphone of your own.

• Transfer pictures and files of any type.

• Collaboratively draw on a shared "whiteboard," which can be saved or printed out for permanent storage.

• Collaborate on a single application, or even share your entire screen with another. The desktop-sharing feature lets multiple people collaborate on, say, a word processing document, each being able to see the contents of a shared window, grab the cursor, and make edits. It's great for training and demonstrations too.

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There is a free download that adds some additional features to Windows Messenger, such as the automatic notification of new mail arrivals on Hotmail, public chat profiles, and text messaging with pagers and cell phones. You can add those features to Windows Messenger by visiting www.microsoft.com/windows/messenger/addin.asp.

NOTE

Microsoft has another free chat program called MSN Messenger, which has an additional feature, the ability to place telephone calls through the service. The programs share a common pool of chat users. You can download and install MSN Messenger if you wish.

Just to be clear, though, this chapter is exclusively about Windows Messenger, and from this point forward, when I say "Messenger," I mean Windows Messenger.

Although Messenger lets you communicate with several people at a time with text chat (as many as you want, actually), it does not have a group videoconference conference feature that lets several people participate in one collective voice or video conversation. For that, you'll need to turn to third-party software like CU-See-Me.

Also, in my experience, audio and video communication with Messenger isn't perfect. I've found it to be picky and unpredictable: Sometimes the audio comes through, and sometimes it doesn't. Connections can drop out at random intervals. Audio "echoing" occurs sometimes, as well as other irritating sound glitches. But when it works, it works very well, and after all, it's free. If you look at it as a super CB radio rather than as a telephone, you should have a great time with it.

NOTE

Messenger uses the newly developed SIP Protocol (Session Initiation Protocol) for voice and video. SIP provides a standard way for messaging, telephony (voice), and video programs to communicate. Unfortunately, hardware-based Internet connection sharing routers may not be able to manage SIP data, so voice and video chat won't work if either you or your contact use one of these devices. Check your router's manual to see if it supports SIP Universal Plug-and-Play (UPnP). You might have to upgrade its internal software (firmware) to get this support. Windows Internet Connection Sharing software doesn't have this limitation: It's already "SIP aware." For more information about this topic, see "Windows Messenger: Shared Connections and Firewalls" on page xxx [this chapter].

Systems Requirements and Platform Compatibility

For text messaging alone, there are no special requirements beyond having an Internet connection. To use the audio and video features of Messenger, your computer must meet the following minimum hardware requirements:

• The most current Windows Messenger version runs only on Windows XP Home Edition or Professional. It's not available on the 64-bit (Itanium and AMD) versions of Windows XP. There are older Messenger versions available for other Windows operating systems, and a Macintosh version of MSN messenger, so you can communicate with people who use those programs. (At least, you can communicate via text messagesvideo and audio chat may not work with earlier versions.)

• Any computer capable of running Windows XP has enough memory and processing power for Messenger.

• For text communication only, any connection speed is fine. If you want to use voice or video, you'll need a 33,600bps or faster modem, ISDN, DSL, cable, or LAN Internet connectionthe faster the better.

• To establish voice or video connections, you need a sound card, a microphone, and speakers. A sound card is required for both audio and video support. Without a sound card, you can only use text chat and desktop sharing.

• To transmit video with your calls, you need a video capture card or camera that provides a Video for Windows capture driver. Any recent USB- or FireWire-connected camera should meet this requirement. Older parallel-port cameras are very unlikely to have compatible drivers (see the manufacturer's Web site).

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Owing to the growing use of Messenger, NetMeeting, and other videoconferencing software, numerous companies now sell inexpensive add-on products such as cameras, microphones, headsets, video cards, and software additions. For example, I got a free color video camera as a bonus for buying a $99 hard drive!

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You should install any new audio or video hardware, and, if necessary, update your audio and video device drivers, before you run Messenger for the first time, if possible. Getting it to recognize newly installed hardware isn't always effortless.

Before we go any further, I should warn you that Messenger's voice and video communication may not work properly if you use a shared Internet connection made through a cable/DSL Sharing Router device, as described in Chapter 19, "Connecting Your LAN to the Internet." Voice and video should work with the Internet Connection Sharing and Windows Firewall systems built into Windows XP. Or, as mentioned previously, if your Internet connection router supports Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), and UPnP is enabled on the device. For more information, see "Windows Messenger: Shared Connections and Firewalls" later in this chapter.

If your hardware router doesn't support SIP and UPnP, you will be able to communicate with text chat, but you will not be able to use voice, video, or desktop sharing. The technical reason is that the SIP protocol used by Messenger isn't compatible with the Network Address Translation (NAT) mechanism that the connection sharing devices use. Yes, it's a drag, but I think it's a small price to pay for the additional protection from hackers that the NAT mechanism provides. I'll discuss this in more detail in Chapter 18 and in the "Troubleshooting" section at the end of this chapter.

Messenger data traffic may also be blocked by a corporate firewall, to prevent corporate users from chatting with others outside the company. In this case, this is a matter of policy rather than a technical issue.

With Whom Can I Communicate?

Messenger works with the .NET Passport system which was described in Chapter 9. You can only chat or voice/videoconference with people who have registered for a Passport. As mentioned in Chapter 9, you don't need to use Microsoft's Hotmail or MSN service, but you both need to register with Microsoft. Remember, if you're concerned about privacy, you can submit the absolute minimum of information when you registeronly your email address is really required. (Of course, without your name on file, others can't search for you by name if they want to chat you up. They'll need to know your email address.)

The type of messaging you can use is limited by what equipment you and your contact(s) have in common. At the very least, you can always type text messages back and forth. Obviously, if you don't have a camera attached to your computer you can't send video, but if your contacts do, you can still receive video when you chat with them, and vice versa. You'll need a microphone and speakers or a headset if you want to communicate by voice.

Text messaging may be the slowest way to communicate but at least it's a guaranteed thing. Personally, I find that I use it more than voice or video, by far. It's the least obtrusive form of Messenger communicationI can have a chat window or two open and pop off questions and answers while I continue to work on my projects.