Verizon, in their infinite wisdom, see fit to rob you of all kinds of things that make their devices useful… so that they can later charge you for their inferior offerings. Whether it’s tethering (hey, pay $15 a month for this app which doesn’t work as well as the freeware tethering!), GPS (it’s a $600MSRP smart phone but we didn’t put a real GPS receiver in it so we can charge you for VZNavigator, even though Google Maps Mobile is 100x superior!) or even MSN Messenger (we removed the built in MSN messenger so you’ll use our’s which works off text messages even though you have a data plan, hey at least it’s good on your battery!).
Well after a few hours of Googling around, I found a few ways to get MSN Messenger on a Windows Mobile smartphone. First of all, there’s going to mobile.msn.com in your browser. Lame, and totally not a good experience at all.
Then there’s Fring, a freeware client for all kinds of services. I didn’t have fun with it at all, it’s bulky and takes to advertising itself over your status message.
Finally, after much browsing, I discovered a way to get the actual MSN service which is supposed to be bundled with WinMo but most providers remove it. Simply download the full installer for Windows Live Mobile and you’re all set… it seems so simple I have no idea why it took me so long to find it (probably because most reasonable Windows Mobile installations already have MSN/Live so no one thinks twice about it).
So I figured I’d review some of the awesome, industrial products (rawr) that freeware developers are putting out. I might review the odd pay app too, but I’m a cheapskate so don’t expect that to happen often.