Review
Google Talk 1.0 for Windows offers many features for communicating with your friends and family. It is available in multiple languages, but most of the main features are available only in the English version of Google Talk. So let's review that version to be fair.
As the developers say on their website, with Google Talk 1.0, you can enjoy Instant messaging and free PC-to-PC voice calls. To add to that, you can also send and receive voicemails (if the person you're calling isn't available), file transfers, and gmail notifications on your desktop for new messages in your email inbox (almost in real time).
The program is easy to use, fast, and very light on resources. Nothing to say. The voicemail feature is very useful. It allows you to leave a voicemail for any of your contacts, no matter if they're logged in or not. You can talk up to 10 minutes, and they'll be able to retrieve your message from their email account. Both voice calls and voicemail have crystal clear voice quality.
Using Google talk with Gmail could be a great experience. Gmail offers built-in chat using the Google Talk network, so you can chat anytime with someone who's checking his/ her email. Moreover, if you use Google Talk with a Gmail account, all of your chats will be saved to a searchable archive in Gmail, far better than saving you chat history on your hard disk.
Another reason to use Google Talk is because it uses open standards for instant messaging (Jabber/XMPP protocol) and voice calling. That means anyone can build applications for the Google Talk network. You can use clients like Adium, Pidgin, iChat, Kopete, Miranda, Psi or Trillian Pro to chat with people using Google Talk.
Some things we've missed this time were the lack of contact sorting and webcam support. The biggest tragedy: Google Talk is only for Windows. If you want to use Google Talk on platforms like Linux, you will have to use the Gadget version or another client.
To conclude, I can say that this chat client will appeal to those who actually prefer bare necessities, and it won't catch the eye of those who like to chat on IM programs just for fun. |
