RSSYahoo's latest Messenger beta goes its own way
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published June 2, 2008, 6:42 PM
It's clearly not a button-down, businesslike IM client: Having experimented with a special Vista version that apparently didn't go over well, Yahoo now is adding personalized polish to its latest free personal messenger, still in beta.
Last December, Yahoo previewed a trial version of its Messenger client with a look and feel that was tailored for Windows Vista. That appears to be the end of that little fork in the road, as last Friday's refresh of its 9.0 beta (build 1389) adopts a customizable "tortoise shell" appearance that complements any decor, including Windows XP.
The latest feature to be re-integrated into the 9.0 beta is online gaming, which is a staple of the existing 8.0 release and something Yahoo has always said would eventually become part of 9.0. For now, its list of games seems somewhat familiar, as it appears the company has been busy making its existing repertoire compatible with the new system.
Overall, the design direction Yahoo is headed looks a lot less like Vista and more like Skype, especially with regard to how it handles voice calls. But as BetaNews member thefalcon2k5 wrote on Saturday, its handling of streaming video is, sending only about one frame per second.
If video continues not to be Yahoo Messenger's strong suit, its ability to find unique angles for advertising tie-ins remains quite healthy. One of the 8.0 version's key features has been so-called IMvironments, which are animated worlds where users' messages to one another appear, and which members of a chat can interact with directly. Among the newest 9.0 beta's newest and preferred IMvironments for users to choose include one world devoted to Kellogg's Apple Jacks cereal, and another quite literally devoted to Hanes' ladies underwear. We didn't have time to test everything in Yahoo's closet before press time.
Testers will still need to be cautious about the installation procedure, just as they have before. Choosing "Standard" as an installation option will reset the default Web browser's home page to yahoo.com, install the Yahoo Toolbar in the Web browser, and adjust the System Registry (in Windows) to load Messenger and sign in automatically upon system startup.
I really like the Vista version, it just is missing so much stuff that it isn't worth using.
I like the direction the 9 beta is and glad it finally has gaming in it as well.
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|Bloat is bloat. Sure, the powerful, heavily resourced systems that represent current standards can download, store, and run these big fat sloppy applications, but imagine if everyone wrote lean & mean code... Our killer machines would maintain their performance if apps were coded tighter.
I hate ads in chat clients! I use pidgin user and force it on my family also. Sure, they want the official AIM and Yahoo clients so they can do all the extra crap, but if they want to be entertained they can go watch TV - if they want to IM friends and family, they just need a couple boxes to type in.
I'm not thrilled downloading and using larger and larger apps just because I have room on my HD! You can't keep spending just because you have more checks in your checkbook!
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|They need to spend a bit more time addressing issues with such tools as ZoneAlarm!
Of course Skype avoids those issues with a much more functional tool at the expense of one of the most @ss backwards UIs in history!
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|look very much latest Windows Live Messenger from MS :) Yahoo start copy ms...shame
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|How much will you continue to use this bull-s**t called Yahoo!Messenger, when we have so many other options like Google Talk, Trillian, Miranda, etc., etc., all of them FREE -- and I say FREE OF ADVERTISING ??
I stopped to use this Yahoo! stuff, including Mail, since there are other cool options.
I do NOT want to be advertised without my will.
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|First few versions of 9 wouldn't work on my pc. This beta version did. Works ok. Still have to say its the best of the im's out there. People would complain if this was a 500k download. So i ignore those critics.
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|People are complaining about file sizes and memory footprints. Are you kidding me? Are we back in 1998? I have a quad core with 4gb and Vista 64. I COULD run trillian or some other crappy 'lite' all-in-one messenger, but I run ICQ/AOL, WLM, Yahoo and Google Messenger and guess what? My system runs the same way (at least, it feels like it does) as it did when I formatted it fresh and loaded up for the first time.
Size is 20mb, blah blah blah whoopdeedoo. 750gb hard drive are going for $100.
The point is this. Obviously you can't make everyone happy. One mans bloat is another mans treasure, one mans 'lite' is another mans 'lack'. I like Yahoo messenger the way it is. I'm hoping that the Vista version will end it's beta with all the features of the XP v9.0 product - until then, I'm at least glad they've separated the code in order to streamline it for users of the various operating systems - and it shows, my yahoo has never crashed and hasn't given any problems since I put it on. I say GJ.
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|Ah, the common mistake of assuming that just because you have something EVERYONE else does. Common error.
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|Completely agree. The file size isn't even an issue now, with 120GB hard disks and 2GHz Pentium 4 the norm 5 years ago. Anyone who has a PC which has components smaller/slower than that won't be running the latest versions of stuff on it so it will hardly be running noticeably slower on half-decent hardware (compared to previous versions). People need to get off the whole "WOW20MBBLOAT!!1!!1!zzzzzzz" nonsense.
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|Typical troll answer.. MOST people nowadays will have AT LEAST a 2GHZ computer with plenty of ram. Your the same as a bloat troll.
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|comparison of the features available in the different versions
http://messenger.yahoo.com/features/
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|and how long was icq's clients in beta before aol took over?
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|Ahem, the Vista Yahoo! Messenger is still available and being worked on separately: http://messenger.yahoo.com/vista/, ahem. We are talking about two separate products. Probably wouldn't hurt to at least visit the web site of the product in question before writing about it, let alone looking a bit more into it.
The Mac version is also being worked on separately, and the latest beta is basically pretty close to what the final is going to be like. People don't really complain about most of Google's products being in beta for eternity (look at Gmail), yet when it comes to others everybody's always got questions. Funny, isn't it?
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|In this case, I think it's right to complain about Yahoo! Messenger for Mac. I've got the 5th publicly available beta release on my machine since they started in 2006 and it has voice communication available finally. The other 4 weren't even able to up to the previous releases basic functionality of text chat + webcam video with any serious stability.
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|The Vista version doesn't support logging, which is something that I *must* have. If it doesn't support logging, I will *not* use it.
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|*cough* digsby *cough*
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|digsby? hmm...so now yahoo's IM client uses 75MB of memory too?
EDIT: sorry, i misspoke. digsby uses 80MB when idle.
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|i think its a better Messenger than Windows Live messenger an to whinge over its file size, take a look at WLM,, its close to 20MB an for what? you dont get aanymore functionality than it once was from it, atleast ICQ6 now does Tabbed windows, what other Native Client does that, ( not talking about trillian or Digsby or other clients like that )
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|AIM has had tabbed conversation since I believe its 6.5 version.
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|The latest Mac version has been in Beta for nearly two years now, c'mon Yahoo!
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|Isn't ICQ still in beta after 10 or more years???
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|yahoo used to make a good messenger, but that hasn't been the case for years. I took one look at the download size 14Mb and thought better of it.
I hear yahoo and msn are now interoperable (sort of), so why would I choose yahoo over msn, or indeed over any other 3rd party solution (that supports lots more networks)
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|Most third party apps do not support webcam and many do not support voice/telephony.. and MS messengers video/audio is only compatible with itself... Yahoo's web conferencing app also seems to be more robust then say.. AOL's...AOL's tends to be very irate about firewall configuration..
I tend to use Pidgin for most things, but if i need to webconference, usually it ends up being Yahoo... (common denominator)
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|Why did 14mb scare you off.. That is less than 0.02% of the full capacity of an average HD right now(80GB).
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