From Vista to Seven

Hello. How are you guys? What have YOU been up to? How are YOUR pcs doing?

Just wanted to do a very very short summary on a few up-front differences between the two Microsoft operating systems. Besides all the changes listed out there, here are just a few that you come across in the very first days of using Seven.

1) Boot Time.
When Seven was first unveiled, one of the main features was 40% faster than Vista at boot. Well that's a myth! Don't get me wrong, it does boot up very fast just not faster than Vista. Either I was very lucky with Vista or whatever but both OSs take 15-20 seconds from power up to desktop. And I tested this quite a few times just to be sure.

2) The real difference in boot is another one. Seven uses parallel driver loading, meaning it loads all your drivers at the same time making use of multi core cpus. Also means that once you see your desktop ..that's it, all drivers were loaded. Vista did not do this, and though it didn't take very long to see your desktop, drivers were still loading. For example after desktop it took another 1 minute to get my printer driver ready. But while doing this ..Vista also caches some of your frequently used programs, meaning if by any chance you use one of those programs it would load up much faster than usual. Seven doesn't seem to do this anymore.

3) Copy-ing + Install time
Copy-ing files finally seems to have gotten fix. It works even better/faster than in SP1 and I'm glad it does. As a direct result, install times for different applications are considerably lower.

4) Security.
Seven is based on Server 2008 kernel + Vista features and security. It's even more secure than Vista, and best of all you can now set the level of agressiveness for the User Account Control.

5) Compatibility
I have not had any problems with Seven ( except for this one). Most programs work, all drivers worked and in case they don't try the Run in Compatibility mode feature because it actually works. And best of all, companies have already released drivers for RC1 for example nVidia updated my graphics driver.
6) Toolbar
This is one of the highlights of Seven but I must say my own feelings are quite mixed. At first it does seem great and it always looks great but as for improving efficiency ..well not so sure about that. I mean it does make things faster but only in specific situations ( mainly the ones demoed by microsoft with multiple similar-looking documents), but there are quite a few situations in which it actually hinders the user. And there is still some work to be put into it because ocasionally it will get stuck and not open windows anymore. You have to manually right click and maximize the window for things to get back to normal. But certain aspects can be tweeked for example when to combine the icons and their size. Overall Seven makes for a nice experience and I really look forward to the finished product.
The end.
As I said this is not completely of thorough in any way. I just wanted to note the first differences people will come across between the two operating systems. Please leave comments and suggestions. :-) Cheers

Vista SP2 RTM

Vista Service Pack 2 was released to manufacturing today/yesterday. It's not a very big deal, as I said the OS doesn't desperately need it anymore ( as was the case before SP1).  It was on the way we all knew and it's the next step. It includes all updates released after SP1, some security fixes and a few compatibility issues that were addressed, and it will be  released to the general public in Q2 ( meaning May or June).

Here are some of the key benefits of Windows Vista SP2: ( taken directly of the Windows Team's Blog )

• Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches
• Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack supporting the most recent specification for Bluetooth Technology
• Ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista
• Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify Wi-Fi Configuration
• Windows Vista SP2 enables the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronization across time zones.
  . 

Superfetch

 Vista introduced this new feature called Superfetch ( and it's still present in Seven). This thing is actually what deals with your memory consumption. Superfetch detects whatever program is running and allocates the necessary amount of memory for the program to run in real time. Another little thing that Superfetch does is that while you still have free memory it detects the programs you use most often and caches them. What this means is that if by any chance you start one of those programs it will launch right away ( many times faster than XP depending on size and program) because it was preloaded into your memory. And this is another reason why most often, if you check your mem status ..you'll notice that usually it's only 1-2% free. That is because the rest is cached ( right now i have 1.4 gb of cache and only 15mb free). And luckily this works really well and in case you start a program that demands additional memory Superfetch instantly releases the extra amount. 

 now here's the fun part .. 2 minutes earlier Superfetch failed and crashed, windows gave me a warning. I was expecting at least a restart if not a direct system crash ..but nothing happened besides Aero being disabled :)) and Aero just came back now as it has done many times before. ( yeah occasionally it crashes and restarts after about 1 minute ..it's because of my drivers).

That's it. I'm really sorry, i know i haven't written anything good but i'm super busy and always tired when i come home, so i never really have the mood to start messing up my pc. Anyway I have a holiday next week and I promise i'll try to get up to speed. Cheers

Changing file permissions in Vista

Ocasionally in Vista you may come across certain system files, or restricted files that for some unknown reason you would want to change. For example let's say you would want to delete a system file ..for example windows.sys ( no that file doesn't exist). Still it's a system file and if you tried to change it, or modify it in any way the OS would deny you acces. Now here's how you can change that. The trick is to become the owner of the file and then give yourself godlike privileges.

Here are the steps :

1) Find the file you want to change.
2) Right click on it, go to properties.
3) Go to the SECURITY tab.
4) Select the user you wish to change the permissions for. In this case it's your own user name.
5) Hit the advanced button in the right bottom corner.
6) Go to the OWNER tab.
7) Hit Edit.
8) Select your user name from the list and the hit ok.
9) Hit ok till you close all the menus.
10) Once again right click on the file, go to properties -> Security.
11)Select your own user name.
12) Hit edit.
13) Give yourself full control over the file.

That's it your done. Now I know there are many such tutorials out there ( some even with pretty pictures) but I posted this for ease of access. Hope it helped someone, Cheers.

Windows Vista/ Server 2008 Service Pack 2

Yesterday Mike Nash from MS announced that Windows Vista Service Pack 2 is being released to a wider audience. So subscribers of MSDN and TechNet, that want a preview can now download the beta build. Of course, for most users it is recommended that they wait until the official release.

Vista Service Pack 2 contains all the hotfixes and security updates released ever since SP1 came out. Plus it adds hardware compatibilities, but other than that very little is trully interesting in this pack. As I said before, Microsoft is now fully commited to Windows 7 and Vista does not desperately need any major improvements ( such as was the case 1 year ago) so quite little energy is spent on this project.

The requirements for installing SP2 are having Vista with Sp1 installed ( Server 2008 shipped with sp1 preinstalled). And an update to the servicing stack that as was with SP1 , will be shipped through Windows Update.

Cheers

Vista Themes 2.0

I consider myself to be an inteligent normal human being...but sometimes I act totally against that. You might remember my other post with bad experiences with Vista themes. And you mihgt also think that I wouldn't be so eager as to try it again.. FALSE.

20 minutes ago I came across what seemed to be a cool Warcraft theme. The only problem is that it was specifically designed for XP. But I don't take into account such "details" :P. So I downloaded the theme, which was not a theme file but an exe. I said ok .. here we go again, and ran the exe. It installed some obscure h4x0r program that once again patched the theme files but also changed some .ico files from the system. Vista of course reverted to basic and then ..even worse ..took the "Classic" skin making it look like win 95.

This was still ok ..the major problem came ..when after patching and changing files ..somehow .. that program messed with my internet connection ( PPOE). So now I have no net .. I manualy revert vista to my own theme and restart the computer. Of course the .ico files were still there ..and the network still wouldn't work. This time ..System Restore did the trick. I simply restored to a few days ago and everything got back to normal.

Conclusion: Stop messing with themes! :)) Cheers.

How to change an admin password in XP/Vista

Let's say your flatmate changed the password on the admin account. Let's say you're not trying to hack into his personal files to see naked pictures of his girlfriend ..rather you're trying to install a vital piece of software that you need to test so as not to get fired. What can you do?

First option
In case you have another administrator account ..well ..use that ( duuuuh).

Second option
You might be able to get into safe mode. It may be protected or it may not be. If you do get into safe mode you'll be able to create another account with administrative rights and then log on to that one. To get into safe mode just press F8 while booting and select Safe Mode.

Third option
If you somehow have access to system files. WinXp ,actually windows NT, stores passwords in crypted files : SAM. There are plenty of .sam editing tools out there but I wouldn't know which one to recommend. You can also try deleting the SAM and SAM.log files located in windows/system32/config/. The problem with tempering with these files is that even a tiny mistake may make your windows unsable and you'll need a clean reinstall.

Fourth option
This actually is the safest one. You can use one of the many freeware programs out there that are specifically designed for this. For a list of such programs and a few other tips and ideeas you can take a look at Petri's site. I actually used Petter Nordahl-Hagen's Offline NT Password & Registry Editor downloaded from there and it worked wonders.
Hope this helped someone, cheers.

Internet speed, bandwidth issues in Vista

So I wrote an article some time ago in which I mentioned I had had some issues with the internet bandwidth in Vista. And this only happens to me when I do clean reinstalls, it has happened a few times now and the fix is really easy. But yesterday other people complained they had simlar problems after random upgrades to Vista.
Symptoms: - very low download speed
- problems with loading search widgets and other such things.
- issues with searching on programs such as DC++ or other p2p apps.
- probably others but they're specific to each system.

How to solve: simply update your network card driver. Go to the manufacturer's website and download the latest drivers available. If by any chance you have the latest drivers simply reinstall them. You can also do this via Device Manager.
Now just in case that didn't work ( thought this has never happened) or you still think you can get more juice out of your connection here are two other tutorials that will help you: First, the auto tuning for TCP/IP receive levels. And second, how to Change or Disable the QoS Reserved Bandwidth Limit in Vista. This one reffers to the default bandwidth that the OS has priority over for such programs as Auto Update.
Cheers.

Windows Vista Service Pack 2

I read about it, but forgot to mention it here. Last week ( October 29th)Microsoft released Windows Vista Service Pack 2 BETA to a very few lucky testers. The whole official release is still a few months away , but I'd say that most likely Q1 of 2009 will bring the service pack to everyone.

In addition to previously released updates since the launch of Windows Vista SP1, Windows Vista SP2 contains changes focused on supporting new types of hardware and adding support for several emerging standards:

• Windows Vista SP2 adds Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches.


• Windows Vista SP2 contains the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack supporting the most recent specification for Bluetooth Technology.


• Ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista.


• Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify Wi-Fi Configuration.


• Windows Vista SP2 enables the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronization across time zones.

And of course, in adition to this there will be a number of bug and compatibility fixes. Will be waiting for it, thought I really doubt it will have the impact that SP1 had, especially because the OS doesn't desperately need it ( as was the case with the first service pack)

Cheers, Geeky

Y Mess for Vista CANCELLED

This is actually news from 2 weeks ago but I thought of posting it just in case you haven't found out yet: Yahoo cancelled the developement of the Vista version of Messenger. After 1 year and a half they finally caved and no further work will be put in this project.
For those of you that have the Vista edition installed, don't worry it will still work but no new features are going to be added, and there's no online support for it. For the rest of you don't worry, Mess 9.0 works very well and we even got the old smileys back.
And for those of you who completely missed the whole Mess for Vista thing you can check out this post.
CHeers!

Life Without Walls

      Life without walls is a new marketing campaign by Microsoft. After The Mojave Experiment, MS decided it needed more public time, showing off features and apps to the ordinary PC user. And so they came up with this. The first stage were the commercials with Bill and Jerry that you can see below. Though nobody knew what they really were about, they got everyone's attention and the spotlight back on the Redmond company. The second stage came a few days after, and the campaign got it's name from this. Microsoft is countering Apple's adds ( that seem to focus on the negative sides of PC''s rather than the positive aspects of MACs ) and taking the " I'm a PC" stereotype and showing real people out there who really "are" PCs. It's a great new start , getting a lot of attention for Windows ..not just Vista ..but "the whole Windows story" as someone from MS said. I'm really anxious to see the next stage of the campaign, cause it's been so long since these guys came out with something so cool. 

       In other news a few people have been randomly getting BSOD's on Vista based machines with no traceable reason. Anything from issues with the IPv6 driver to CPU temperature being to high. My bet ( though not yet confirmed) might be an update from MS or more likely from some third party wide spread app. Keep you posted on that. 

This is one of the prints of the campaign.

This is one of the Seinfeld/Gates adds, there's 2 more you can find on youtube.

And this is the part that reminds us that certain people ..should be behind walls..padded white walls to be more precise.

By the way for more prints and campaign movies you can check out this site.

Day to day

         

                  This is the way each and every day of my life starts :P. Neah I'm kidding, but it's a nice little tribute done by a friend whom I thank a lot. I know all you haters of Vista out there will love it. And it's a prelude to an article about the real improvements of Vista that i've been meaning to write for some time now. Might be ready next week. Cheers

Vista Annoyances Resolved

     This may seem to some as a weird thing to do, something like advertising for the competition. But I never started this blog with the intent to make money, or as someone said leave a big mark. Basically I started this blog because I was somewhat bored of all the work I ocasionally do, going to waste. And another reason was to somehow thank and show my respect to many people out there that know what they're talking about, and have helped me many times.

    Now, what am I talking about: Thanks to Chris Flores from MS, Ihave known about THIS ARTICLE, for a few days but I have never had time to read it until now.

    It's a " breath of fresh air" ( if Skype doesn't sue me , Chris might), bringing an unbiased look at Vista's features, Vista vs XP , implementation rates and all those things that are so often blogged/posted/written/talked about around the net and the IT comunnity. It also features a few tweaks for Vista, plus a quite lenghty PDF file with all kinds of tweaks, ticks and explanations. Best part is Koroush Ghazi ( the author) is very coherent and uses very little tech jargon so that every user may understand it. 

   Again the article is HERE, it's a little long but I believe it's a very nice read.

Quick Update on Vista

I mentioned two posts ago ( approx) that I'll keep you posted on what happens when the grace period for Vista SP1 expires. Well that happened a few days ago and here's what happened.

-> first ..and this was immediate , actually a few hours before it expired , my background turned black. But that was fixed by simply ..resetting the background :)). It might just go black again once I reboot but it really doesn't bother me. Also someone mentioned that Aero will be disabled. Well it;s hasn't so far, it's working just fine. Later edit: it reverts to black after some time ..or after runing a full screen app.

-> second the system keeps telling me ..from time to time let's say once every 30 minutes that I may be a victim of sofware counterfiting. It's not only that I'm a victim, I'm an addict of counterfited software :)) 

-> third thing, when you boot up , after logging in, a screen appears that tells you to register now, and the register later button becomes active after about 15 seconds.

-> this is a curios one: from time to time when i use my cpu for more than just listening to music or refreshing my desktop ..let's say when a play a demanding game, it stalls for a few seconds and then goes back to normal . That has happened a few times and i know for a fact it has never happened before. Now this was not mentioned anywhere in the effects sp1 might have, nor have i heard of anyone having such issues. It might just be that my hard drive is kinda old and maybe it's just failing. Not sure on this one.

-> another curios one: updates still work. Two days after my license expired I downloaded and installed the latest definitions for Win Defender. I really wasn't expecting this.  I read somwhere that usual updates will not be delivered anymore but critical ones will. MS is socially obliged to deliver the critical updates to all machines even if they say they won't/don't/whatever. Right now this seems to be the case.

So to sum up , if you don't mind ocassional small popups ( they really don't bother me and they aren't even on top of other applications) and the fact that you have no background, you can get all the benefits of the SP1 without worrying of anything bad happening ...for now at least.  Whichever way this develops I'll keep you posted. And for any experiences or questions please be sure to leave a comment.

Vista Themes

      It’s 2 am Saturday and I’m writing about what I’ve been doing for the last 3 hours.
Most people like to enjoy and relax, maybe go out on their Friday afternoons. Well no, not me. My favourite activity on a Friday afternoon is hiting the desk with my head. And I came very close to doing that today.

      There comes a time in every man’s life when he says to himself: Well I’ve got a good computer, a great OS but ( after seeing a few SCI-FI films ) I want it to really look cool. Such a thought occurred to me a few hours ago, and I decided to change my classic Vista skin with a cooler techier one. Now I’m not the one to usually have 20 skins for every application and 45 types of cursor that I change acording to my mood. Actually I haven’t really used skins for the OS ever since Win 98. It’s just something that I find useless and memory consuming. But tonight I forgot all that.

      So after googling around for a nice theme I decided ( as usual) on an OS X Leopard one, actually extremely well done from what I saw in the previews. So I downloaded a few versions to test them. Unpacked them and tried to install them. Nothing happened except for my background going black. I decided to take another look on the site where I found them. “ You need to get Vista Glazz and patch files for the skins to work”. I think to myself ok no problem, so I quickly download the latest Glazz version I can find. Install it , hit the “check dlls” button.
!!! “ Vista Glazz is missing key components of the program, do you still want to patch?”. Wow, key components ..no I don’t want to patch. I uninstall it and get the version from the original Vista Glazz website, without corrupt files and stuff ..or so I thought. Do the whole thing over again. Check dlls. “Glazz is missing key components..” oh screw it , patch anyway. It patches a few dlls from the system. Great. Reboot needed. I reboot. When I log on again , my Vista was looking somewhat like MS DOS 5 .

      I think to myself, well it went back to windows basic and now I can install the theme. SO I try to double click on the .theme file. Nothing happens. Then I try to open the personalize menu. OPS, ERROR. APP Crash, host process error. My PC was kinda telling me to go *%& myself. And I got that error for anything that had to do with visual styles , resolutions, basically the way anything looked.

      OK so I figure ..patching system dlls with obscure program = BAD IDEA. Didn’t even know what files it had patched. So I go to my theme folder and notice that the Aero files were patched. Ok no problem it must have kept originals. WRONG, no originals. So I ring a friend and he sends the original files to me via messenger. I try and replace them. BANG no can’t do. YOU NEED PERMISSION to modify these files.

      How do you change permissions in Vista? Easy, right click on the file, properties, security. Advanced, Owner, make yourself the owner of the file. Back Back back , Edit permissions, select yourself give yourself full control over the file. I had to do this for about 10 files in the end. Try and delete the patched files. Again no can’t do. The files are in use. By what? Who knows …Aero wasn’t working, no theme service was working , no graphics service was working ( I disabled all the services myself) ..but hey the files are in use. OK. Reboot. Safe Mode. Delete. WOW the files are still in use. Now that’s weird.

      Solution: Renaming the patched files ..even though they were in use I was allowed to rename them ..yeah ..don’t ask… then copying the good files, rebooting, and then deleting the patched messed up files that were no longer in use due to the name change.
So I did this for my Aero folder and the files inside it. Rebooted once more. I was actually thinking everything would be fine now. Guess again. After logging in nothing had changed, and I still got the fatal errors when trying to change stuff via control panel. And then I go to the original Glazz forum and try to search for a solution. Somebody was complaining of something similar so I followed those ideeas and found out that besides the Aero dlls it also patched a few other ones. To be exact Uxtheme.dll, Themeui.dll and Shsvcs.dll, all found in system32. And the guys also mentioned that Glazz makes a copy of the original and stores it as filename.dll.vgorg so this can be used in case anything goes wrong. Said and done. Again I modified permissions, again I rebooted in safe mode, again I changed names and deleted the crappy files and replaced them with the ones that I got my friend to send to me.( the so called copies of original with the .vgorg were of no use)

      Finally I logged in and surprise ..nothing changed. The theme was still basic BUT ..and this is important I didn’t get the Fatal error thing in Control panel. So I recopied the Aero folder once more ( it had somehow got corrupted between 3 reboots ..again don’t ask ..) recopied the good aero dlls and rebooted for the last time.

      Praise the Lord it works now. People also suggested trying to boot using “ last known good configuration” but that didn’t do any good. And also trying system restore to an earlier date but I didn’t have any restore points near today , plus I have very little faith in that program as it has NEVER helped me with anything.

      The conclusion of this story is : 1) always have a copy of the original file before doing anything to it.
 2) Try and enjoy your Friday afternoons.
 
  Please leave your comments and suggestions after the beep.

  Cheers, Geeky.

Vista Service Pack 1

      

      Yes it’s true , it’s TRUE , it’s HERE. The new Vista SP1 is here. On March the 18th Nick White from MS announced its release on Windows Update. I found out about it that night. OK, so what did Microsoft promise about the SP? They said it would improve reliability, stability, efficiency, driver compatibilities, and other such issues. What does the SP do? Well mainly what it’s supposed to.

      After about half an hour ( that’s how long the update took) and 2 restarts I had SP1 up and running. I took a look at my win version , and wow major change from build 6000 to build 6001. Good sign, means the sp worked. Second change, you can now actually select which drive you want to defragment ( no I’m serious you couldn’t on the original release of Vista). I’m messing around here but that’s because I haven’t noticed any major changes. The system does seem more stable with certain aspects, and it looks as though there’s somewhat less CPU usage, but I also noticed about 10-15 % increase in RAM usage. MS said that the service pack would bring a 50% increase in file copying speed. Of course that 50% is only possible because with the service pack they fixed some sloppy scripting they had done in the original release. Plus I did a few tests with different files and personally I would estimate the increase at about 15-20% but maybe that’s just me.

      Compatibility with different drivers was indeed improved ( I only got 1 BSOD ever since I installed the SP and that’s with a very curious driver). Unfortunately Vista is hardware scripted, meaning that it is designed for specific hardware much like Mac OS is, thus making possible many compatibility issues. Hopefully by now most manufacturers have learned to test everything with both Vista and XP ( though this should have been going on for the last 1 year and a half) and such issues can be avoided. The problem persists with older hardware that doesn’t have support any longer but that’s a different story.

      So if you have a genuine Vista install you can install the SP and have all the wonderful benefits mentioned above. But what if you don’t ? There were two main hack for vista that made it possible for everybody to enjoy it without paying. One of them was tricking the activation timer into thinking you had 999 days to activate and then just rewind it again. The second method developed by Paradox was to fool Windows by emulating a specific BIOS and then use a specific key code. This would make Windows appear as if had been preinstalled by manufacturers and required no activation. Every update worked, no issues with anything, it would easily pass registration and had no problem with WGA. Well the SP1 takes care of both these methods rendering them useless for the time being. And I did a little snooping around but until now I haven’t found any way to bypass this. So if you didn’t have a genuine install, and you installed SP1 you probably now have 15 or less days to activate.
      The good part is that there is no more “reduced functionality mode” that Vista had. After the 15 days are up you’ll just have a black background, and continuous remarks from WGA that you may be using counterfeit software. That’s all. I’m curious what would happen if you uninstalled the sp after those 15 days. The old hacks might still work. I actually will try that on another computer just for the fun of it.

For the original info on the release of SP1 you can check out this link.

For a list of some of the updates ( but not all) contained in the SP you can check out this link ( I wouldn’t download anything from there, get the original if you want Sp1, it’s free) . If you want a full list you can probably find it somewhere on the MS site.

Questions, suggestions be sure to leave a comment.

Cheers, Geeky.

Yahoo! Depression™

Dep dep dep depression!

Not only am I depressed because of my own day to day life, but now Yahoo decided to depress me even further. Ever since I got Vista, I was anxious about the new Yahoo Messenger for Vista, of which I saw a presentation here. Useless to say that almost one year later that page hasn't changed a bit, and there is absolutely no news of the new program. I'm very satisfied with the 8.1 Messenger at the moment, but the new one would have improved the whole Vista experience thing even more. I mean come on, we all want cool smart looking stuff on our pcs. Not only is the project long overdue but it now seems to be dead and burried as Yahoo stopped it's developement and moved on to the new Yahoo Messenger 9.0 Beta Release.

I must say that at first when I heard about this I was actually happy. I said well they must have taken their ideas from the Vista one, integrated them with this one and so the new thing must be absolutely great. Unfortunately I was waaay to idealistic for Yahoo's standards.

Ok I don't want to be that mean, so I'll start with their ( one and only ) nice new feature: the "inline media player". The media player is integrated into the IM window so from now on whenever someone gives you a link to let's say YouTube you can view the movie directly in your window without having to open a separate browser. I understand the same happens for JPEG, GIF and PNG images. Yes truly a nice new feature, BUT i can already see problems with it. If you're anything like me, you'll have lots of people sending you lots of different video links, occasionally at the same time. From what I saw, even if it doesn't directly play the video it still loads the player for every link in every window. Now you get to fill up your RAM with only a few links. So where the hell did all my multitasking power go ?

  Enough with being nice. I've waited a really long time for a new Messenger ( 1 year , Yahoo Messenger 8.1 came out in Q4 of 2006) and they really disappointed me. Let's start with the beginning. Yahoo Messenger 9 offers a cool new user interface ..NOT. It's exactly the same interface just that they moved the avatars on the right side and made them somewhat bigger. Great now we can all perfectly see the "Yahoo Sucks MSN Rulz " pictures better.
  Another thing they added is the hover options. If you hover your mouse on a contact some action buttons will appear such as IM , E-mail and Call. Perfectly useless as we already had those action buttons in 8.1 next to the pop up thing remember ?
  Talking about useless, the new Messenger automatically creates a new group for you with all your address book contacts so you can now scroll 80 pages down if you want to look around in your contacts. Again Mess 8.1 had this done in a much more subtle and nice way: the icons under your status that changed between Address Book and Messenger List.
  As the guy in the demo says ( you can watch the demo here) a nice new feature of Yahoo Messenger 9.0 is the Search bar up there in which you can write a contact's name/id and it will find it for you. Now maybe it's just me but wasn't this feature already included in the program ? Oh yes ..wait ..I can see it now as I minimize Opera and look directly at my main messenger window... I wonder how it got in 8.1 if it's brand new in 9.0 ?
  And now for the real NEW AND AWESOME FEATURE : Whenever you write a " :) " in your status message, it now actually appears as ..as ...as ... A YELLOW SMILEY!!!! Indeed ladies and gentlemen a feat never before seen in any messaging program. You have to hand it to the guys at Yahoo , they really know what counts.

As an ending, I'll just recommend we all use Meebo.com for messaging. At least they never pretend to be better than they really are.