Messaging

If you’re familiar with Windows Phone, you know that Microsoft’s smartphone platform sports an excellent unified messaging client called–wait for it–Messaging that lets you communicate with others via services such as SMS, MMS, Windows Live Messenger, and Facebook, all via a single interface. That Messaging client uses color‑coded threads to differentiate between conversations you have, regardless of the service used, and you can switch back and forth between the available services depending on which services your contacts use as well. It’s a nice little app that integrates well with the underlying OS, popping‑up notification toasts if you’re doing something else and a new message arrives.

NOTE

SMS stands for Short Message Service and is used for text messaging, while MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Service and can be used for sharing video, photos, and other multimedia content.

The Messaging app for Windows 8 works in much the same way, though there are some key differences between the two. The biggest is that the Messaging app for Windows 8 does not support cell phone/smartphone services such as SMS and MMS, since these occur over carrier networks and almost always incur additional fees.

Though these the two apps work similarly, those who are familiar with Windows Live Messenger for Windows might consider Messaging to be its Metro‑styled equivalent, or even replacement. That’s because Messaging works with the same basic two services as does Windows Live Messenger: Windows Live and Facebook.