Over the years, so many messengers have come up (review refers to India as a regional domain), but all fail. Be it software giant’s MSN Messenger with lots of unique features (which have been COPIED by YM!), or desi-made Rediff Bol - Yahoo! stands still in all Chatter’s heart and mind!
Of the features I like about Yahoo! Messenger are:
* Very well designed emoticons - they perfectly resembles the mood.
* Stealth setting is simply awesome - Put yourself in safe area, chat whom you like, don’t chat you don’t like (Although there are creepy applications which can detect if user is Online or not!)
* Properly shows Offline/Online activities of other members - MSN Messenger does shows ONLY Online activity and NO Offline activity.
* Grouping of friend is also very useful, although present in most of Instant Messengers - it can be used to send message to all in one go, to apply Stealth settings and so on...
* Offline Messages - the ONLY feature, in my view, where MSN cannot capture Indian hearts. Let the user online, invisible or offline (real offline); you can still send him/her message. Next time user logs in, he/she will get the messages and will be delighted! Yes, if other user logs in after long time and/or has tooo many offline message for him/her - they all are deleted by Yahoo! server (Not sure, but this is it!)
* Audibles - really astounding feature, now Hindi (as well as other International) versions also! Drawback is that it does not shows up properly in ’’Offline Messages’’
* IMvironment - that’s unique feature, I guess coined by Yahoo! itself, a long back ago. Other messengers are now growing up in this arena! ;)
* Yahoo! Games - you can also play yahoo games within messenger which are natively present in games.yahoo.com site. But you can also do proper chatting also, which cannot be made with that easiness in the games.yahoo.com.
Features that are present but not good or really bad:
* Webcam and Voice communication features are not so good - works sometimes, sometimes (most of the time) does not work. With no specific reason these feature does not work and says, server error, halts the Messenger, and even slow downs entire computer! Clarity is also not good, MSN Messenger is good in both aspects - it gives superb quality for web-cam and voice!
* A non-stable application, crashes many times for no reason.
* Does not handshake properly with network. I’ve faced problems many times, like user is shown online but is already logged out (intentionally or due to system failure at his/her end); many times online messages does not go/come up in time and reaches all in bunch - sometimes even lost.
* Yahoo! on SMS/Mobile is good feature, but again inconsistent in itself - No one can be 100% sure if he/she (other user you are looking) is on online in that specific mode.
* File sending feature does not work most of the time - even if it works, it halts entire Yahoo! Messenger (Yahoo! programmers, it this application not good Multithreaded application???)
Wel, well, wellll , there are other features/drawback of this Instant Messengers which most of you chatters know and can also go thru other reviews... Lemme complete this!