Thursday, February 12, 2009

Yeah, I don’t really see the point …

So, the Live team decided to remove the specific statuses from WLM 2009. 

image

In some ways I can understand why they wanted to: they all pretty much say the same thing (Don’t interrupt or Don’t expect a reply any time soon) so why keep them? (The developers might think).

On the other hand they were useful for getting an idea of how long the contact might be away for or why they are busy.  Back in the day… Microsoft even gave examples of when to use them: Away status meant > 2hours, Out to Lunch meant < 2hours but > 15 minutes, with Be Right Back of course being equal to < 15 minutes.

I suppose not enough people used the extra statuses or the team removed them for extra compatibility with Yahoo! contacts.  Maybe they should have made the time ranges more the idea instead of discrete names.

What do you think? Do you use the other statuses?  Are you ever tempted to write the plural stati?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll miss my "out to lunch"
I think i've been out to lunch for 4 or 5 years now


of course i know use digsby, so things have changed

Anonymous said...

Hmm I should check my spelling before I post things.

"Of course I now use digsby..."

on a side note, Digsby allows for a custom status. I wonder if msn users see that I'm still out to lunch?

AnthX said...

No, I only get the base statuses, Msg Plus provides Idle in tool tip though