MSN Toolbar are trying to drum up downloads with a competition (hey, this time it’s UK based). It’s investigative based, play a game and find out who kidnapped tha cat. You’re supposed to download the toolbar to play. No real problem I rarely use IE anyway.

SO it gives me a toolbar search, popup blocker, links into Messenger, Hotmail, Spaces and My MSN, plus tabs. Tabs for me are now mandatory; why have more than one window open when i can work in a single view.

So the game starts by sending you an email with the link to the gaem; it goes to hotmail and so comes the first issue – hoe do I get the link to pen in a new tab. No right click option, I click and it opens a new window.

The next sticking point. There is a search option to get more clues; click on it – the pop blocker stops the window opening. I clicked on it; i made the decision – open the window please. Or, even better, open a new tab

Third point. Now I’m supposed to use the Search tool to find information about a fictional solictors; using the search term, they come up as a sponsored link. Click on it and it goes to a 404. Actually it goes to worse than that for me, an artifical MS page saying they can’t find it (when these come up it usually means I have to start retypeing the URL!) Only copying and pasting the link URl gets me to the page. Then all it is is a single page, with no working links. So far, not selling this. If you are playing a game – get it right. And you cannot proceed further without login links. Time to stop.