Not real sure if all of my contacts on MSN messenger service are wondering what is going on, but my account has been hosed to the ?messengeruser" account they created for me yesterday and nothing has been said or done. not sure if there is email associated with them bogus accounts but I have not received any apology and my account is still screwed. Don't know if I should believe that over time they will fix it or if they just tend to keep my account all screwed up. Maybe I have to go the long way around and create a new account with my real information rather than what they made me go through yesterday. To anyone still reading thanks for letting me vent but this is c***.

Sure, we believe you. "Internal error."

The internal error was to redirect mac.com addresses to the bit-bucket (the equivalent of /dev/null on Windows, whatever it is).

I have a great solution to those wanting to use this service. Don't.

I feel bad for those who had problems, but this is the kind of c*** we should expect from MS. I have one friend on MSN Messenger who refuses to move. So I set up an "@passport.com" login for Messenger use, which I log into through Adium. I have never had any problems, so I recommend it.

still use ANYTHING from MicroSHIT is way beyond me.

...but if u communicate with anyone outside the US, chances are they are going to use MSN as their messenger. So it's not as easy as 's**** Microsoft.'

... judging by your other posts, we get it... you hate microsoft. fine. anything else to say?

Sorry, but I don't believe you. As someone who lives outside the US, I have no problem using other services. Maybe people are adverse to using AOL IM because the A stands for "America" but it works just fine outside the US. There is also Google Talk that also works from iChat.

I wonder if the "internal error" lost his job over this one.

Unfortunately, if you changed your address, you can't change it back. Here is the text of the response from Microsoft help:

"I gather that you would like to change back the e-mail address that you use to sign in to MSN Messenger for Mac. I understand that you already tried to change yyy@hotmail.com back to x**@mac.com but you saw no available option to do it on the Window Live ID page. You further added that you are not able to create a new account with your old e-mail address. I certainly understand your sentiment about this. Unfortunately, there is no option that would allow you to change an MSN Hotmail e-mail address to a non-Hotmail account. Or to put it straight, there is no option to change your yyy@hotmail.com back to x**@mac.com.

If you would like to create a new account with your old e-mail address, then you have to wait another 90 days before you can register it again."

This is the second horrible experience I've had with Microsoft services in the past two weeks.

No horrible experiences for me since, oh, about 2002. When I switched myself back to the Mac. hip-hip-hooray.

I know that some of their stuff is rather pervasive (Office, anyone?) but whenever possible i try to use the alternative. And not because I think M$ is the Evil Empire, but because experience has taught me that for all their genius, they farce everything up that they touch. All these great ideas and yet they can't seem to piece together a worthwhile experience of it.