Windows Live Messenger Wave 4 Beta is out and available for download now!

Windows Live Essentials beta includes free programs from Microsoft for photos, movies, instant messaging, email, blogging, and more.

It includes beta versions of Messenger, Photo Gallery, Mail, Movie Maker, Writer, Family Safety, and Sync, plus Bing Bar and Messenger Companion. You also get Microsoft Office Outlook Connector Pack and Microsoft Silverlight.

Windows Live Essentials requires any of the following operating systems to be installed on your computer:

32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 with the Platform Update for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 with Service Pack 2 and the Platform Update for Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2.

Visit Microsoft for details & download link.

Note: If you click on the Download Now link, it will install all the Windows Live Essentials. To choose and install only the one’s you want, click on “Choose the programs you want“.

Windows Live Essentials includes the Windows Live Messenger. Here are a few basic tips & tricks to help you get started!

1) To turn it into Compact view: Click on the top-right side corner button to turn Messenger into compact view.

2) Appear offline to ONLY one of your friend: Till now you were able to keep you status offline to avoid interaction from some of your friend, but now you can set your status to offline for the contact you want.

Just right click on contact name and choose “Appear offline to this person”.

3) Know more about your friends: Wan’t to know what your friend is recently doing in his social network, than just right click on its name and choose “View Social Updates”

4) Disable ads from Windows Live Messenger:Whe you hover your cursor over the ads which appear at the bottom, they may just expand to cover the whole Messenger screen, which is quite irritating!

If you want to disable these ads, go to System32\Driver\etc folder and take full control of Hosts file. Open it and add the following line in it. Save it.

127.0.0.1 rad.msn.com

That’s it!

5) View message History: If you don’t remember where did you left your conversation last night with your contact than click on File > “View Message History”.

view msg1 New Windows Live Messenger Wave 4 Tips and Tricks

What do you think of Windows Live Messenger Wave 4? I just love it!