Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

Trimming the MSN Messenger Fat

If you’ve recently upgraded to the latest ver­sion of MSN Messenger, ver­sion 7, you may have noticed the huge amount of new bull­shit fea­tures that have been packed into this most recent release.

Even Patchou, developer of Messenger Plus!, has wussed out and removed the most basic of annoyance-removal fea­tures from his product — the tweak that removes the MSN ad ban­ner at the bot­tom of the main MSNM win­dow. The ad ban­ner wasn’t enough, how­ever, and Microsoft have seen fit to add even more bloat that few will use, includ­ing even more tabs in the main win­dow; emoticon “packs” (for when your poorly enun­ci­ated SMS-speak just isn’t enough); and “winks” and “nudges” — at your dis­posal to “enhance your conversation”.

Thank you, MS, for not trust­ing me to be able to con­vey my mean­ing on my own, and provid­ing me with these ridicu­lously child­ish fea­tures to annoy the fuck out of my con­tacts. Contact not respond­ing? Have they dared to look at another win­dow for a few seconds? No mat­ter, in MSNM 7, you can spam them with sound and light until they are forced to open your win­dow again.

Fortunately, help is at hand in the form of MSNMSGR Ghost, a most excel­lent little pro­gram which mod­i­fies the MSN Messenger execut­able, and allows you remove as much annoy­ing garbage as you wish.

Tick the boxes as you desire, then click the Go but­ton; select the dir­ect­ory in which your MSNM pro­gram resides (usu­ally \Program Files\MSN Messenger) and voila. The bull­shit is con­veni­ently swept under the rug. Until the next Messenger update of course. Sigh.