Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit (BU) has announced the release of Messenger for Mac 7. Though this is a major milestone, it’s still well behind the Windows equivalent in terms of functionality. For instance, Messenger for Mac 7 finally delivers the long-awaited audio and video conferencing, albeit only for corporate users running Office Communications Server.

Meanwhile, for non-corporate users, the biggest changes in this release are the ability to give nicknames to contacts and search within one's list of contacts – quite disappointing though Microsoft claims that an update is expected “in the coming months.” Both corporate and regular users, however, will now be able to take advantage of the Bonjour instant networking technology to see if any other Messenger for Mac 7 users are active on the same LAN. Interested? You can grab the software by going directly to the download page.