What's new with Windows Live Messenger

Windows Live Messenger (8.0.0792.00) is miles ahead of the last windows messenger, in terms of appearance.. Hopefully this is the unifying product, I couldn't understand why they had 2 separate apps that run on the same service, one with a modern interface & one that looks crap! It's obviously replaced msn messenger for me, and some of the new features are quite nice:

I like the concept of LiveCall.. integrating a phone app is smart, although I wish I had a single VOIP-based phone app that could integrate with EVERYTHING... including my Outlook, Exchange, Sharepoint, IM contacts etc in real time. And then intelligently choose what protocol to use when making calls... if it's a contact with a VOIP phone, then call it voip-voip and make the call free. If there's only a landline number (or voip isn't showing as signed in), then call the landline.. and actually for most countries, that's free too. And the last resort is the mobile... except in the case of American mobiles, coz yup, they'd be free too (at least skypeout & voipcheap offer free VOIP-mobile calls for the U.S.)

The shared folder feature is nice too, and makes sharing a bunch of files much easier.

And the "Search" button in the chat window is just weird... why would i want to bring up random, unpredictable & often sponsored links in a chat window... unless I was just bored... it's certainly an interesting application, tying msn search or live search into the IM app - the whole "search from anywhere" concept I agree with, but not the way it's currently implemented?? You click search and it sends out a message full of links? I'm not so sure about that.

The instant search in the main window (just above the contact list) is a feature that I can see the point of - and it's a good point - but I just don't see myself using it. I don't have a million people on my IM list... I only have about 50 contacts, and they're quite geographically diverse, so they're never on all together... and that means about 10 - 15 online, about 20 mobile and the rest totally offline - so I don't really need to trawl through hundreds of contacts and millions of contact-related fields to get to some info... Like the way I need to (and appreciate the point, if not the actual efficacy of Instant Search) in my Outlook Inbox..

But unless I'm mistaken, apart from these things and a couple of links to live.com & the messenger team blog, there's not a lot more there... and I was really expecting a lot more with the whole "Live" hype. Maybe there are more features waiting to be rolled out? Or maybe I'm just greedy :-)