Yesterday I tried Windows Live Messenger 9 Beta.

Works pretty well, fast, nice interface (not to childish), and the ability to sign in with the same accounts onto multiple computers.

But there is an issue with the custom emoticons.

They get preserved on upgrade (luckily, they did it right this time), but they don’t display if you use them, not in the chat window itself, and not in the text input box.

Messenger 8

Messenger 9

Let’s hope they fix this in the future release