Messenger

[Guest Wizard]

When does IM sign out? I don't manually sign it out and yet at some point in time it signs itself off. I would like more control over that. Ideally I would like IM to work like SMS in that the messages can arrive any time just like a PC on a broadband connection. I would like to see a solution that allows me the option to leave IM on all the time. If that isn't possible, I think it's important to make it clearer when IM signs out. I am aware that I would need to pay for more bandwidth to have IM permanently signed in. I'm also aware that Orange may lose SMS revenue by promoting this service, but I think that issue must be solved and not skirted around. Charge me for the bandwidth if you must, but I want IM on my phone to behave just like IM on my PC.

I turned on the option in Messenger on the SPV so it is online when a connection is available. Although Messenger is online more than it used to be, it is not on whenever there is a connection available. It seems entirely random from my perspective.

What's worse is often I'll be sat at my PC and my phone will sign into IM with no clearly visible reason and kick me off Messenger on my PC. I use Messenger often on two PCs and they manager to coexist without kicking me off each other, and I'd like the SPV to behave in a similar fashion. If I sign into messenger on my phone I expect it to stay signed in until I sign out manually, sign in somewhere else, or the network blows up, just like my PC.

I would like to be able to Appear Offline, Away, Busy, etc. I'm finding that a lot of people are IM'ing me and do not know I am on a handset. I'd like to mark myself as Busy so they know I am online but not available. Equally when the handset is in powersave mode I'd like the status set to Away. Currently the phone can be in my pocket for an hour and still show me as Online so people send me a bunch of messages I don't read and think I'm ignoring them.

I would like the facility to appear offline to specific groups. e.g. in an evening i'd like to appear online in IM to friends, but offline or busy to work contacts. This also applies to the desktop edition of Messenger, but on a phone it's even more important to have the ability to closely manage how communication occurs.

When I am in a chat session in Messenger and the other person is typing, all I see is their name. I expected it to say something like "Message coming..", as "Bob Jones The Third of Walthamstow is typing a message..." just isn't going to fit especially with the names many of my contacts use. Some are in excess of 15characters.

When I open IM, there's a link up the top called Sign In, and a soft key marked Sign In. I think of of these is redundant. My tiny brain goes "huh, which do I click?" :D

Once signed in, the Send button is available to use even when the selected item is my own name up top. I think at this point it should be greyed out.

With Messenger 5.0 on Windows XP there's an option to show online contacts in groups (Group Offline Contacts together) which combines really well with arranging contacts into groups. So for example it means I can see all my Friends/Family who are online separate from all the business contacts that are online, and all offline contacts are shown together at the bottom. I have a fairly large number of contacts in IM, so this feature would be very useful for seeing the online ones in their groupings.

When I use Messenger on Windows I can always see in the task bar that I am online. I would like that facility to be present on the SmartPhone as well so I can see whether it is online or not and what my status is.

It's very interesting to see the human issues in and around using IM on a phone, but overall I'm very pleased with how it works and despite the SPV's keyboard (sent by the devil himself to try us) it works very well. I've had one person take the mickey for me using IM on a phone on the basis that it would be a waste of time, but he will be surprised when he tries it out at how usable it is.

Wizard

[Guest Bazz]

Well you don't ask for much do you :-)

Remember it is only version 1. Some of the features you're talking about weren't added to much later versions in the Windows world, so I wouldn't expect everything to be implemented on the very first smart phone version. I'm just amazed it actually works as well as it does!

I may be able to help with your first series of questions. This is based on my observations, having had the phone for well over a month.

If you click the "Run this program when connection is available" it only connects if you are connected to GPRS. So if GPRS is available IM will not connect. However if you use IE then you are actually connnecting to GPRS and IM will sign in and keep the GPRS connection open, even after you finish using IE.

I've only every been signed out when I've terminated the GPRS connection (by pressing the red hang up key) or when I've gone out of signal. IM then comes to the foreground, which is annoying cause it doesn't return to the home screen when the keypad is locked :-(

Basically if you have that option turned on you should be signed in whenever the little G is shown above the signal strength.

Barry

[Guest Wizard]

Maybe I am asking a lot, but my comments are more squarely aimed at expressing my experience with the device. Generally I'm fairly happy with the phone, but if I were on the SmartPhone team at Microsoft I'd be interested in hearing detailed feedback on how it actually performs out in the wild. Btw, isn't this v4.0 of this edition of Windows?

I have the email app set up to dial to update the IMAP headers in the inbox. I assume it is this connectivity that is being taken advantage of by Messenger, but it's fairly unhelpful because it makes the phone incompatible with desktop use of Messenger (I keep getting signed out when the phone checks my email). I disabled the "run this program when connection is available" setting on the phone because much as I want IM to be available on my phone, I won't tolerate it logging me out of my desktop machine.

Really what I'd like is for IM to be permanently connected when I have the phone on me and I have enabled it - just like my desktop PC. As long as it's fairly reasonable, I'm happy to pay data charges for that type of usage (as I expect to with the regular scheduled email downloads).

Wizard

[Guest Bazz]

Cool. Fair enough. I agree with you both in this and your other posts. The phone's a bit shabby at the mo and it probably should have been kept off the market until they were fixed - but then I wouldn't have it :-)

About only being able to be signed in in one place. I never signed in in two different places and therefore never realised you couldn't until I got my SPV, but it looks to me like an IM issue rather than and SPV one.

Barry

[Guest Wizard]

I think this is an SPV issue, not a Messenger issue. I use two PCs for Messenger and they never fight each other to log me on. If I go to one and sign in, the original machine will never sign me in unless I sit in front of it and click "Sign in".

The SPV has this option to log in when connected, but that's not what I want. What I want is "log in when connected, IF I TELL YOU TO". i.e. if I click Sign In on SPV Messenger, I want it to stay logged on as long as there is a connection (or until I sign in somewhere else). If I then sign in somewhere else and the SPV Messenger gets logged off, I don't want it to sign back in until I explicitly tell it to.

What I am asking for is the same behaviour that Messenger provides on the desktop, but in the SmartPhone OS. Consistency, basically. If desktop Messenger behaved like the SPV does then we'd see this:

1. Log into Messenger on PC A

2. Rip network cable out of PC A

3. Go to PC B and sign into Messenger

4. Plug network cable back into PC A (equivalent to GPRS coverage becoming available)

5. PC A signs into messenger and kicks you off, even though you're sat at PC B and never explicitly told PC A to sign you in.

I think that whether Messenger is signed in or not must be entirely down to what the user specifies, not the availability or lack of availability of any networking.

Wizard

[Guest Bazz]

My point about this being an IM issue was because it's not possible to sign in in two places (which I never realised until I got the SPV). I misunderstood you - you don't want this, you just want better management of when you do sign in.

Doesn't messenger on a PC try to sign in automatically when a network connection is available? I only use IM on a dial up PC so I'm not sure how this works on a Networked PC. Basically everytime I dial up and connect to the Net, Messenger tries to connect - booting me off my phone. This is exactly the same as what the phone does if you have the automatically log in option enabled. When it gets a connection it logs you into Messenger, booting you of Messenger on every other device.

Doesn't the scenario happend as you described? I would guess plugging the cable back into PC A would give a Network connection, which IM would use to connect, kicking PC B off? However you seem to say this doesn't happen so maybe this only happends for Dial Up Networking.

Sounds to me like you should not use the automatic option at all and should only launch IM when you need it. This should then keep the connection open until either you log out or lose signal.

Barry

[Guest Wizard]

It's only possible to be signed in at one location on Messenger because it needs to know where to send the messages.

I had forgotten that Messenger on the PC can be configured to connect at dial-up, but where this is different is that it is automatic. If I have two PCs and one of them was set to connect to Messenger when a connection is available, that is great but only as long as those dial-up connections are initiated by a human. If, for example, the PC was configured to dial-up automatically on the hour to download email and Messenger kept signing in then you'd get kicked off Messenger on any other machine you were signed into.

I think one facility that would be useful on the SPV is for Messenger to remain signed in unless the network dies for a significant period of time. If I go through a tunnel on a train I don't want to be signed out, but if I take a trip to the moon I would expect to be.

So trying to think a bit more clearly about this, I think what I am asking for is for Messenger on the phone to do its best to remain signed on once I hit "Sign On". i.e. it is then common for me to only by sign out on the SPV when I sign in somewhere else. My greatest bugbear is that I hit "Sign On" and I am then signed out (seemingly) randomly at some point later.

The "run this app when there is a connection" option seems pretty useless if the phone is set to download email automatically, but it would be great if it could be configured so that Messenger only signed in if the connection was initiated automatically (as opposed to a scheduled email check).

It seems these (crucial) subtle issues only appear when we start using devices that work in a new way. It's very interesting.

Wizard

[Guest Emad]

Eh, it'll improve.. What I'd like is Trillian for Smartphone. Here's hoping, heh..

You can change your status by using the action button on your name in your contacts list. I usually just set myself to 'on the phone' for obvious reasons :D Auto-away would be nice though.

[Guest NXNM]

Hi,

Ive not recieved my phone yet, however the signing in thing, from what i gather is not actually a problem with MSN on the phone. MSM sends out heartbeat signals to the servers to say your online, what is most likley happening is either your loosing GPRS at times and not getting a responce from the heartbeat or the phone is doing somthing intensive (like counting seconds on the clock :D ) at the time a heartbeat is sent out. The result is two possibiliities, MSN appears to be signed in on the device, however on any other client is un-contactable, or MSN signs off completely.

Because it signed out or moreso timed-out it checks every xx minutes for a heartbeat, when it finds one it signs itself back in, which if ur using one account is not a bad thing, and is a useful feature.

When i get my phone i intend to use 2 accounts for MSN, my current one, i will make a backup of my contacts, create a new account and import those contacts, that way i have 2 advantages, my business contacts can see when im in the air if my Mobile account is on, and/or my office account is set to away etc. Maybe two accounts would work better for you and avoid the hassle.