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Features
- No bloody adverts!
- Does not treat you like an imbecile.
- No useless and extremely annoying tooltips (e.g. 'Click here to send the message' for the 'Send' button - if you needed the tooltip to realise that, you shouldn't be using a computer!).
- User identities: each user has their own identity, to which they can add details of their accounts (like in Outlook Express). That user can then just log on with their identity and they will be signed in to each of their accounts. Each identity can be password-protected and has its own set of options.
- Support for signing in with multiple accounts at the same time (unlike the official client, which supports only one) in the same instance of the program.
- Very fast sign in (compared to official client).
- Automatically reconnects if connection is lost (without prompting for password!).
- Sign in with any status (except for idle), instead of just online - something that took Microsoft SEVEN major versions to realise that people wanted it!
- Notifications when contacts remove you from their contact list (as well as add you).
- Perform actions on several contacts at once (e.g. block, allow, delete, add, remove, etc.).
- You can rename contacts! Perfect for those people who keep changing their nickname every 10 minutes and you have to keep looking who they are.
- Cut down on the annoyance level by not alerting when contacts keep signing in and out every 10 seconds, flood you with messages, and more.
- Your contact list is not cached in the registry (as in the official client). I consider this to be a serious security threat - any person or program can just look in the registry to find out your contacts' E-mail addresses and have them all added to a spam mailing list. In Dave's Messenger, the E-mail addresses (as well as passwords) that you add to your identity are all encrypted before they are stored in the registry.
- No ActiveX control (as in the official client) for third-party applications and web pages to plug into. I consider this to be a security threat - an application or web page could be created by a malicious person to have all your contacts' E-mail addresses added to a spam mailing list, flood them with messages, etc.. It is also a means for viruses and trojan horses to spread.
- Notifications when contacts return (change their status back to 'online' after being 'away', 'busy', etc.), in an alert similar to when contacts sign in.
- Notifications when contacts start a conversation with you and leave the conversation (open and close your window)!
Find out whether someone has blocked you or not, but this only works if they're currently online (i.e. not offline or invisible). Although the block checker is still present in Dave's Messenger, Microsoft made changes in January 2004 such that if a user has blocked you, the server now tells the client that they are offline, rather than they've blocked you. In simpler terms, it no longer works!- Delivery reports for instant messages! Find out when your messages have been received sucessfully instead of just when they've failed!
- No limit on the length of each message you can send! The official client has a limit of 400 characters. However, please note that while Dave's Messenger does not impose a limit on this, the server does. If you send a message that is too long (a little over 1200 characters), the server will immediately disconnect you from the conversation and participants will not receive the message.
- Date/time stamp for each message.
- Choose any colour for your instant message font, instead of being limited to only 16.
- Resumable file transfers (where both the sender and recipient are using Dave's Messenger or a compatible client). File transfer to/from the official client still works but is not resumable.
- Transfer of EXE and MP3 files is not blocked!
- Avatar support.
- Helps prevent worms that spread via Messenger.
- Message filter.
- Custom alerts.
- Truncate nicknames in IM window, for those that are annoyingly long.
- Save conversations as RTF (including emoticons!) as well as plain text.
- Event log.
- And much, much more!!