OMG, its full of bloat!!!!!!!!

How so? You only install what you need and use. I use Windows Mail and Photo Gallery. Hardly bloatware.

This release offers such extreme amounts of bloat, but one thing ticked me off.

The nickname function has been REMOVED in the name of connecting will all sorts of social network sites, so you can no longer have say < 3, ; D or ^.^ in your display name, but instead you must use a given name and a surname that only allows letters.

I personally uninstalled this garbage straight away and reinstalled the previous version.

Wait, people still use WLM/MSN?

http://www.trillian.im/

And gmail as mail client. You can even run your shoddy hotmail or ISP email through gmail.

Yes, trusted computing is on it again!

I serious hope all these social networks kill themselves with content, like it happened to all the random search engines google killed.

Have no time for MSN, it proves Microsoft is still living in the past.  

There are more superior programs and services to be used are free and less 'chunky'

  ... or Pidgin if you want a no fuss chat client

Argh! This is awful! It switched all my contacts (including mine) names to SURNAME + NAME instead of what we use here, in Portugal (NAME + SURNAME).

We never use the surname first. It's so confusing and irritating!

I was already using this version since its beta, and I got to say, it is great that it is finally out of beta mode, but of all the services above I only messenger and writer only

I tried Trillian a couple years ago but from what I remember Msn smileys didn't work so I uninstalled it. Have they fixed that?

Sounds like I'll wait a bit.

This thing is a nightmare. I installed the Beta. It crashed. It wouldn't uninstall properly so the new one won't install.

I've given up on the programmers at Microsoft, They're not up to the standards of the last bunch of coders.

I now use Zimbra and Picassa and am quite satisfied.