# MSN and AOL duel with Marketing...



## James_F (Apr 23, 2002)

Link to story

I don't think my stomach can handle the MSN 8 and AOL 8 marketing blitz. :crying: Why oh why?


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## Brian Rector (Mar 25, 2002)

Personally, I think the whole MSN vs AOL 8 marketing blitz is just nonsense. Why? For one thing, AOL states that in those new commercials that "We listened to our customers to make a new and improved AOL 8. Its what you asked for.......blah blah blah". Well, they never really listened to their customers. AOL 8 is nothing more than a desperate attempt by a company to get back to its glory days. Note to AOL: It will never happen again. 

Now....about MSN: Its about the same thing. All MSN 8 is about is this: Its their attempt to get beyond the Government issue and begin to go back to what the service was originally: a online service provider. MSN was in this fashion until about a year and a half ago when they had only 3 million subs and wanted to catch up to AOL in a big way. So, they made the content free. Now.,..thanks to the content being free, MSN discovers that they are not getting enough revenue, so they now want to go back to where they once belonged (Get Back Bill Gates).


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## Brian Rector (Mar 25, 2002)

Word of caution: Microsoft released MSN 8 this afternoon. It took away my modem settings. Had to reinstall. Also, it detected no account, so I had to redo all the information. 

Its great once its configured. However, MSN Messenger and also...Windows Messenger will clash if you have Windows XP. So...you'll have to configure MSN Messenger to start and Windows Messenger not to. 

More in a few minutes


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## Brian Rector (Mar 25, 2002)

Heres some more wonderful observations:

1)Had to endure 2 18MB downloads. One was corrupted (I chose to open, not to save). The one I saved went fine. Good thing I had some time on my hands. (Mr DJ..play that Styx song for me)

2)Remember the left pane being for the My Stuff, etc? Now, its on the right and best of all....it can be removed!!

3)MSN Mail is basically taken from Outlook Express.

4)The bookmarks menu is almost transparent (which explains why MSN 8 takes a minimum of 64MB of RAM)

5)You will have to pay to use MSN 8. Starting Thursday, MSN Explorer will no longer be free.


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## Brian Rector (Mar 25, 2002)

6)If you have Windows 95 and want to upgrade to MSN 8, you will have to upgrade to Windows 98 to use MSN8. For the first time in The Microsoft Network's history, Windows 95 users are left out of the upgrade process. The software that The Microsoft Network had out for its subs (ranging from MSN 1 (1995) to MSN Explorer 7 (2001)) was good for almost all Microsoft systems, except Windows 3.1 and Windows NT.

7)As I mentioned at the earlier posting, MSN 8 takes a minimum of 64MB of RAM, but Microsoft recommends 128MB of RAM.


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## Geronimo (Mar 23, 2002)

Shows how dumb I am. I thought windows messenger was MSN messenger.


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## James_F (Apr 23, 2002)

Geronimo, 

The are sort of the same thing... Windows Messenger looks like MSN messenger except it doesn't have all that MSN stuff built into it.


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## Geronimo (Mar 23, 2002)

It actually is the same service too right? I mena no reason to have both. 

I just thought that Windows messenger was ana attempt to integrate it more tightly with Windows (it launched when I launch Outlook Express). But perhaps I have been using Windows messenger for years and calling it MSN Messenger.


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## James_F (Apr 23, 2002)

Its very confusing. Windows Messenger comes with Windows XP. MSN Messenger is for Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, NT, and Macintosh. I believe the whole messenging system is called MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger connnects right to it. That said, MSN installs special versions of thier software that seems to hurt Windows Messenger. I have no idea why they didn't replace Windows Messenger with MSN when you install it. I use Trillian so I haven't kept up with MSN/Windows Messenger. 

Simple answer:
Windows Messenger is the name that Microsoft has given to the messaging client that runs on Windows XP. The same software is known as MSN Messenger when installed on older operating systems (such as Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000).


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## Brian Rector (Mar 25, 2002)

Now to make MSN extra attractive to everyone...here is another special MSN feature:

Download Manager

Yes, you thought that downloading via Netscape and IE was easy, right? Well...MSN has included with their software their Download Manager. Easy, right? How hard can it possibly be? All you have to do is click and download. However, you have to configure MSN to download, save, and even run a program..and this is not easy. Its very frustrating. When you click for a download to occur, the usual menu comes up, but then a special message shows up that says this "MSN has to have a program to do this. Would you like to choose a program for this to operate?" (No...I am not kidding). I choose Internet Explorer, which is listed as 'Recommended'. However, IE crashes when this happens, but the download manager does do its job. 

Guess "The Butterfly" does do it better....the "it" would be causing more ulcers than AOL does....lol


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## James_F (Apr 23, 2002)

Now MSN is getting in trouble with NYC over their Butterfly stickers...

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963330.html


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## James_F (Apr 23, 2002)

Even better... Did anyone see that The Tick is now supporting MSN 8????


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## Brian Rector (Mar 25, 2002)

I got my CD from MSN in the mail and this does correct all the errors that I posted earlier. I am very impressed by MSN so far. However, this is just my observations. I have heard some nightmarish situations with MSN 8, but they have been in the minority so far.

One warning though: Norton Win Doctor will claim to detect some errors with the MSN installation. Make sure you let Norton ignore those because it will lead to a corrupted MSN install if allowed to correct and also....a possible Windows reinstallation in the near future.


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

AOL 8.0 is OK but the featured spam block has a limited sized list I filled in a few days 

Does MSN allow a unlimited number of blocks?

8.0 also doesnt allow saving mail to my favorite places, which I did often. av are chached in aols server. They did this to keep the file size down. But favorites do appear on any computer you log ont aol with.


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