Adium vs MSN Live

The last few weeks, things with F have bothered me quite a bit, especially after the MSN event. On top of that, I've heard of lots of complaints about the latest MSN Live, so I decided to play with it a little bit.

Setup: latest Adium (1.3.7) on Snow Leopard, Live Messenger (10.4.8089.726) running on XP

Scenario 1: Account on Adium does not have account on Live as friend. Account on Live does not have account on Adium as friend.

• I used Live to add Adium as friend. Adium did not receive any request from Live at all. Adium remained offline the whole time on Live.
• Then I used Adium to add Live as friend. Live did not receive any request from Adium either. Live appeared online to Adium, but Adium remained offline to Live.
• I logged off Adium and logged back on. Both appeared online to each other.

Scenario 2: Account on Adium does not have account on Live as friend. Account on Live does not have account on Adium as friend.

• I used Adium to add Live as friend. Live did not receive any request from Adium, but showed as online immediately.
• Then I used Live to add Adium as friend, but Adium still appears offline to MSN.
• I then logged off Adium and then logged back on. This time Adium is online on Live.

On Adium, I right clicked on Live account, and chose "Get info", a window popped up as shown in the first screenshot here. The value of 'has you' is No, although in reality Live does have Adium as friend.

I then used Meebo and log on Adium account, and found that the value of 'Has You' is also 'No', as shown in the second screenshot here.

Microsoft must have changed something so other IM programs no longer get the same old information they used to get. And because I know how to check this, and this caused me so much anxiety. If you use Adium to add any friend to MSN, it would be a good idea to send a message to confirm if they add you and can see you online.