Windows Live Messenger 8.1 available now

InfoWorld is reporting that the latest version of Windows Live
Messenger--version 8.1--is now available, optimized for Windows Vista. Updates
include a new look for contacts, photos, and emoticons (plus a few bug fixes).
Here's the link to the article:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/01/31/HNvistamessenger_1.html

And here's the link to Windows Live Messenger:
http://get.live.com/messenger/overview

After the Y!M! demo, I'm waiting for Bruce K and his crew to deliver something
that surpasses that in order to get excited!

I think there's still a lot of rooms for improvement on this new Live Messenger.
 However, there are two things.

First and foremost, they've absolutely positively HAVE and MUST remove those
ads.  Granted, some of them are non-intrusive but still, look on the user list. 
For crying out loud, it took up almost 1/2" of space.  Not to mention that
most of the ads were from doubleclick.com, who's ads oftentimes were
contaminated.  In addition, if you use Spybot and HOSTS file, you run the risk
of having a) a non-working WLM (doesn't this feel like those spyware that force
people to view ads) or b) a WLM with 1/2" of "Unable to View
Page".  That's just annoying to see.

The other thing about WLM is that, there's a nasty bug that the team never
fixed.  The "Unable to Sign In" bug.  Now that is really irritating,
I've had this happening to me 10 times already!  Messenger would tell you unable
to sign in because of some Firewall or Proxy problem or Hosts problem.  But, in
reality, it's just corrupted data due to service/server upgrades.  And there
isn't even an option for users to "fix corrupted data".  Definitely
*not* user-friendly.