Has anyone used Verizon Messages Desktop App

Question

I'm curious, is there anyone out there that has used the Verizon Messages Desktop App? Were you able to use it successfully? Can you still?
You can download it here (The icon that says "Download Desktop App")
Verizon Messages - Verizon Wireless
I opened this thread which I'm pretty sure has just joined all of the other forgotten threads that never get answers.
VERIZON MESSAGES PC App

Answer 1

I have downloaded the Message+ application for 64 Bit Windows 7.  It's a wonderful idea and I think it's just great.  Unfortunately, its performance is inconsistent, the interface is not intuitive, certain features are difficult to use,  certain obvious features are missing and there is no integrated help facility.  I have elaborated on some of them, below.  Be aware that I have not had this program for very long, so there may be answers and explanations that I am not aware of.  And I might simply be wrong.
Performance is inconsistent:
Messages which appear on your phone will either immediately appear on your Message+ window (which is wonderful) or they will never appear, ever.  Even waiting for hours doesn't get them.  Exiting and running the application won't get them--they simply don't show up.
The program sometimes hangs for no readily apparent reason, thus hanging every single window associated with it.  Once this happens, this is a solid hang.  The program will simply not process any more windows messages at all.  Since it will not handle a WM_CLOSE, you can not kill it from the task bar, you'll just get a beep.  You must use the Windows Task Manager to do it.  Once you have killed it, it will steadily hang more frequently.
Message+ can get into such a state that it will no longer start, no matter what you do.  You can look at your processes, see that it is not there, but trying to run it give you a brief blink and nothing happens.  A full reboot may fix this, but I do not know because I have not performed one.  I think that is just too drastic and I simply have too much other stuff going on.
Once performance starts to degrade, it does so rapidly.  Message+ will simply stop receiving ALL SMS messages with no indication why.  There is no obvious way to reset this.
Attempting to fix the application by choosing Repair from the installation program (which is not documented anywhere) produces mixed results.  The repair process takes an extremely long time and the progress bar barely moves making one think that the repair has hung.  It is an exercise for the truly patient (or desperate).  This will fix the program enough so that it will start again, but performance will be poor and hangs will become more frequent.
A repair inconsistently leaves messages around.  One contact may still have messages while another has them all deleted.  There is no readily apparent reason for this behavior.
Once you stop receiving messages, you do so forever.  Even a repair doesn't fix the problem.
Close buttons [X] do not consistently work.  Sometimes you got to click them a few times.
The interface is not intuitive:
On just about any GUI that you've ever heard of, available buttons or hot spots are highlighted in some way.  The Message+ application does not follow this paradigm; the entire interface is flat and there is no indication of what you can click on unless you directly click on it.
It is not clear what a button does until you click on it.  Some of the symbols are not obvious nor are they documented in any readily access place.
Icons can bring up windows which are either docked to the main window or separate with no readily apparent design.
Windows are launched with either a double or single click, which is startling and inconsistent.  There is no readily apparent reason for this behavior.
You can do different things based on whether you are in edit mode or not, but it is not described anywhere how to do this and it is not obvious how to get out of it while you are in it.  You've got to hunt around and experiment.
It is confusing to figure out what phone number to synchronize with.  I installed the program only three days ago and now I have completely forgotten how to do this.
Certain features are difficult to use:
Trying to get at the text of a message is tortuous.  You've got find very tiny dim icons which may or may not be there.  Sometimes you'll manage to get a pop up with a right click, but all the options will be greyed out.  There is no way to figure this out except by (laboriously) clicking on every part of every window at each stop to see what you can do.
You can only select a single message text at a time for certain things.  If you want to get an entire thread, there is no way to do this.  You can select multiple messages in edit mode, but the only available action is to delete all of them.
You can get per message info, which is great, but you have to do it on ever single message.
The scroll bar performance is poor.  It is very difficult to determine where you are in a window, scrolling control is jerky, trying to move up a little bit at a time does not work.
Trying to find the program on the Verizon website to download it is not directly obvious.  You can Google the web for messages, some of which have hard URL's that you can click on to get to the right place.
Certain obvious features are missing:
SMS messages contain valuable information and there is no way to save a message stream to file.  This is lack of functionality is positively astounding.  You've got to scroll through the message and take screen shots.
The arrow buttons do not consistently scroll window contents.  They typically work, however.
Messages which are sent to a Jetpack (they have phone numbers) are not caught, which is puzzling.
You can not display message contents and information at the same time.  This makes it doubly tedious to record information.
There is no undelete, roll back, restore or recover feature.  Once you delete a message it's gone.  Forever. Even undelete programs do not work because the delete is not apparently file based.  You can hunt through the block list, but this can get tedious.
There is no way to back up or restore the entire database.  Some of this material is critical.
There is no export function.  You can not export to a .PDF to e-mail to somebody.  You can not export to a .CSV for offline analysis.
Help:
There is no integrated help facility..  You can not pull up a window of descriptions of basic tasks.
There does not appear to be an online FAQ located in any obvious place.
It is difficult to Google for help online, you must always put Message+ in double quotes, "Message+" or you will get unexpected results.
There does not appear to be any large experienced user community on the Web yet.  This support site is probably your only realistic chance of getting some useful information.  Otherwise, there are many, many questions out there.
The Send Feedback Function does not work if you do not have an installed mail client on your desktop. If you are using a web based one, gmail for example, a browser window will start with the entire message stuffed into the URL bar.  You've got to cut the text out of the URL and paste it into separate fields in your message.  You've better off just simply sending an e-mail to [email protected].  Thus far, however, I have yet to receive a single response.  Sometimes hitting the Submit button performs no function at all.  The window simply stays up and nothing happens.
In summary, I think it's a great idea, but I simply don't think the User Interface engineering is all that thought out.  The look and feel of an application of an application are absolutely critical to successfully exploiting the functionality.   You should only deviate from (decades old) graphical  interface paradigms when you really have something different to do.  Message+ is performing basic functions, it doesn't need window glitz.  Glitz for glitz's sake is just plain annoying and causes a needless learning curve.  Further, Message+'s glitz is uninspiring and in some cases, downright confusing.
The flawed functionality, the stability, the data lose, the lack of obvious features and the near complete lack of documentation make me think that this is essentially an unfinished or alpha stage product and one would hope for improvements as new version roll out (if they ever do).
If anyone knows of any alternatives to Message+ that do what it does, I'd love to hear about it.  However, I am only interested in capturing SMS messages, not sending any sort of e-mail or data.