I\'m looking for a piece of software that can send plain text messages between t

Question

I'm looking for a piece of software that can send plain text messages between two Windows computers on the same network.

There used to be a Net Send feature in Windows, but when it came to XP SP3 I understand that Microsoft decided to lock it down.

I'd prefer it to have a GUI with a 'pop-up' notification system like emails in Outlook rather than using command prompt to not frighten less tech-savvy users!

It would also be good to have a feature where it notifies you if the intended recipient is 'online' so to speak.

Explanation / Answer

LAN Messenger is free (actually open source) and will do everything you need.

There is a Windows build of it (as well as builds for Mac and a few popular flavours of Linux) which runs just fine on Windows 7 (I use it every day), that supports plain text messaging between different computers on the same local network.

It has a user interface very similar to online chat clients, allowing user's to set their status (online, away, offline etc.) and for other users to see this status, and will show a popup in the task bar when new messages arrive.

A few additional features it supports:

Broadcast message (You can send a normal message to all online users)
Private chat rooms (chat between selected users)
Public chat room (chat that can be joined by any online users)
Direct file transfer (send files to other online users)
Avatar image (users can set an image for themselves, both custom images and from a pre-made selection)

For the sake of disclosure: I am the packager of a portable version of LAN Messenger, but am in no way affiliated with LAN Messenger itself. I don't and can't earn anything from any download of LAN Messenger or any derivatives of it.

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