MSN 8 to Arrive in Late October
WinInfo | at | by Mike
Microsoft will unveil the latest update to its MSN online service in late October. MSN 8 is an impressive new release, though it is somewhat tempered by its Hotmail-like approach to supplying functionality to users. In the past, the distinction between MSN customers and other online users accessing MSN services was pretty small: People that paid MSN for access were able to dial directly into MSN from anywhere in the US and had access to MSN email accounts, but that was about it. However, with MSN 8, Microsoft is shutting off many services to non-MSN customers for the first time, making the service potentially more valuable to paying customers. And with growth of AOL Time Warner's America Online service stalling under the weight of its perpetually out-of-date user interface, which annoys users with numerous pop-up windows and advertisements, MSN might finally be poised to make some serious gains on the market leader.