Windows Phone, Windows Live and MSN

Windows Phone 7.5 has been getting some awesome reviews, and rightly so. The thing is amazing. I really think Microsoft has begun leading the way for the mobile platform.

But I'm highly pissed off with the Windows Phone team. Why? Because to use MSN, your msn contacts must be associated with the first live account you register to the phone.

I don't even know what to say about this, it's so silly. I understand that it might get confusing to allow multiple Facebook accounts, multiple Windows Live accounts, etc.

But could they not allow you to choose which account MSN contacts are associated to?

When I first setup my phone I didn't use the Windows Live account I use for MSN (my Hotmail) since it's existed since 1997, it's got 100's of contacts I don't want in my phone-book, a lot of MSN contacts exist from work, or playing online games, or from forums etc. So I used the Windows Live account that I use for MSDN. I added all my contacts and everything was great, (after I imported all my contacts from outlook into Windows Live Contacts)

I attached my Facebook account, went to People > Settings > Filter Contacts, and turned off Facebook so they do not show in my normal contacts list. This allows me to have normal phone users, but see the Facebook users on the Messaging list.

Now I want to show MSN contacts, so I load up the next Windows Live account, it loads all my contacts, but when I go to messaging, I get NOTHING. No MSN users at all.

On my second Windows Phone (yes I have two) I reformatted it, and signed it up on my Hotmail Windows Live account, and what do I see? All my MSN contacts.

Ok so the team didn't give us the option to select which Live account we can use for MSN... So I went to download IM+

DEAD END

ATTENTION MSN/WLM users! MSN/WLM is not supported in 1.7 version of IM+ due to Microsoft Marketplace request. If you would like to continue using MSN/WLM in IM+, do not update to 1.7 version from version 1.2. We will continue working on this situation with Microsoft.

WTF... So not only can I not use MSN on my phone natively. The team has blocked anyone else from providing the feature in their own applications...

That's not fair at all.

Microsoft should be ashamed.

So as it stands, if you don't use your MSN account as your Windows Phone account, you can't use MSN.

Microsoft is definitely leading the way in Mobile platform, but they massively screwed up MSN for many users.

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