Windows 8.1: The Missing Manual

Windows Live Messenger

Somewhere between email and the telephone lies a unique communication tool called instant messaging. Messenger, of course, is Microsoft’s very own instant messenger program; it’s part of the Essentials suite described at the start of this chapter.

Messenger does four things very well:

• Instant messaging. If you don’t know what instant messaging is, there’s a teenager near you who does.

  It’s like live email. You type messages in a chat window, and your friends type replies back to you in real time. Instant messaging combines the privacy of email and the immediacy of the phone.

• Free long distance. If your PC has a microphone, and your buddy’s does, too, the two of you can also chat out loud, using the Internet as a free long-distance phone.

• Free videoconferencing. If you and your buddies all have broadband Internet connections and cameras, you can have video chats, no matter where you happen to be in the world. This arrangement is a jaw-dropping visual stunt that can bring distant collaborators face to face without plane tickets—and it costs about $99,900 less than professional videoconferencing gear.

• File transfers. Got an album of high-quality photos or a giant presentation file that’s too big to send by email? Forget about using some online file-transfer service or networked server; you can drag that monster file directly to your buddy’s PC, through Messenger, for a direct machine-to-machine transfer.

This would be the perfect place to read about Messenger, if it ...