Microsoft Windows Live Messenger previewed

As perhaps the most visible and eagerly awaited of Microsoft's "rolling thunder" series of Windows Live-related releases, Windows Live Messenger, the follow-up to MSN Messenger 7 is perhaps the perfect example of what the software giant is getting right these days. A decade after the company waltzed into a legal morass of bundled operating systems and applications, Microsoft has figured out that consumers are smart enough to pick the products and services they want, and they aren't particularly interested in being force-fed whatever the company tries to stuff in each version of Windows.