That's It! No More Windows Live Messenger 9.0 Beta for You!

That's it! No more Windows Live Messenger 9.0 Beta for you! Windows Live Messenger 9.0 is designed to be the successor of Windows Live Messenger 8.5. The latest, finalized release of Microsoft's instant messaging client dropped at the beginning of November 2007, the application being tailored on Windows Vista. Version 8.5 was released into beta earlier this year, on the heels of the launch of Windows Live Messenger 8.1, which introduced support for Vista as the latest Windows client hit the shelves.

But, the past month brought with it the release of an early, pre-beta development milestone for Windows Live Messenger 9.0. Microsoft sent out the invitations and then opened up the testing program. In the process, the Beta release of Windows Live Messenger 9.0 was leaked to the Internet, and became widely available for download, although it was intended for only approximately 5,000 testers. Starting on November 2007, Windows Live Messenger has also been available for download via Softpedia.

This is no longer the case. As a direct consequence of a request from Microsoft, we have discontinued the download of Windows Live Messenger 9.0 Beta. Users will not notice that the download link is no longer functional. This situation is temporary and will last until the Redmond company will make available the first official release of Windows Live Messenger 9.0 opened to the general public.

Users will simply have to hold in there for a little longer, but from what we have seen out of Windows Live Messenger 9.0 Beta, it will surely be worth the wait. We only hope that the testing and development process of Windows Live Messenger is not affected in any way, as Microsoft informed that it would consider shutting down access to development milestones of the next iteration of its instant messaging client in the eventuality of a leak. For the time being, users will simply have to do with Windows Live Messenger 8.5 and Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista.