Back in November we shipped the final version of Windows Live Messenger 8.5 along with several other Windows Live applications and services. A lot of you have already upgraded, and for that we thank you and hope you’re enjoying it as much as we enjoyed building it. Starting soon, we’re going to make it easier for those of you who haven’t upgraded yet to get onto our latest and greatest.
This will happen in two phases. First, everyone running Windows XP or Windows Vista will get a prompt encouraging you to upgrade. When you accept the upgrade, the new unified installer will launch and start upgrading Messenger. While it’s installing, you’ll have the option to download and install other Windows Live applications. You don’t have to take any of them, but we think you’ll like them and hope you’ll give them a try.
It will take a couple of weeks for us to get this upgrade out to all users, so if you don’t get it right away don’t worry, it’s coming. If you don’t want to wait, you can go to http://get.live.com/messenger/overview to download and install Messenger 8.5 right now.