Windows Live Messenger Turns Ten

By Digital Trends Staff July 22, 2009

Windows Live Messenger Turns Ten

It was 10 years ago today that Microsoft launched its Windows Messenger, the instant messaging application that’s proved incredibly popular over the last decade. Now rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, it boasts 330 million users worldwide.

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft has been pushing the anniversary, saying:

Recommended Videos

"If Windows Live Messenger was a country, it would be the third largest in the world (behind China and India, and before the US) and almost 10 times the size of Canada."

In the early days, however, it wasn’t anything so grand. Users could only send short messages, the contact lists were very limited, and there was access to AIM users – by far the dominant chat of the time.

But it wasn’t long before AOL blocked Microsoft users, remembers V3, and it was after that the service really took off. Now it’s as much a business tool as one for person communication.

Digital Trends Staff

Digital Trends has a simple mission: to help readers easily understand how tech affects the way they live. We are your…

Computing

Windows 11 24H2 may crash your PC if you have a certain SSD

The blue screen of death in Windows.

Microsoft's Windows 11 2024 Update, more commonly referred to as 24H2, is here, but it's not without issues. Reports from disgruntled users have flooded various forums, talking about constant blue screens of death (BSOD) that have appeared since they updated to the latest version of Windows. Although Microsoft has yet to officially acknowledge the problem, the users seem to have pinpointed the cause of it, and even found a workaround.

So far, it looks like these crashes are fairly limited in scope, as they seem to happen if you have one of a few Western Digital SSD models. Other SSD vendors appear unaffected so far. As reported on the WD Community Forums, users are getting BSODs with the error "critical process has died" ever since they updated to the 24H2 update.

Computing

Microsoft is fixing my biggest problem with Windows 11 on handhelds

Asus ROG Ally with the Windows lock screen.

We're finally starting to make some progress on the handheld experience of Windows 11. Although Windows 11 handhelds like the ROG Ally X are some of the best handheld gaming PCs you can buy, that's despite their use of Windows, not because of it. Now, the latest Windows 11 Insider preview (build 22631.4387) adds a feature that should make navigating the OS much easier on a handheld -- a keyboard built for gamepads.

Windows has included an onscreen keyboard for years, and updates over the last couple of years have even made it usable with touch inputs. On a handheld, however, there are two problems with the keyboard. You can't invoke it naturally -- you have to bind Windows + Ctrl + O to a hotkey -- and you can't use your controller to navigate it. With the new update, Microsoft is fixing that last point, at the very least.

Computing

How to take a screenshot on a Windows PC or laptop

Dell XPS 15 OLED laptop sitting on a small table.

Screenshots are incredibly helpful for capturing images on your desktop, but the method for taking one on a Windows laptop or PC may not be immediately obvious if you haven't done it before.