Apr 07, 2001 07:55 AM
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I know too many people with Yahoo Messenger (Y!M) to turn my back on this product. I am not too happy with Y!M but what can one do - Yahoo has all those other community features like groups (they acquired egroups) and clubs. I came to use Y!M since I was a member of a Yahoo Club.
The Good
The good about Y!M is that it is easy to use. I like how I can configure the effect of the [Enter] key.
also good is that one can log in ''invisible'' or in any other status so one is not bothered if busy. With MSN Messenger, one has to log in ''visible'', as far as I know.
The Bad
often down - this may be a Yahoo overload problem, not a fault of the messenger software itself.
some people have told me that member names showed up on their block list. E.g. a friend of mine didn't get my msgs anymore and finally she noticed I was on her ''Block'' list. She had no idea how I had gotten there and removed me. A few weeks later, I was blocked again. She used the Mac version.
the look. This is just my opinion. I think it looks.. ''clumsy''. The buttons at the top are too big. The window's frame is too wide. I liked the look of the OLD ICQ before AOL bought it. Now ICQ is too loaden with colorful icons, even worse than Y!M. MSN messenger looks a little better.
ALT+F4 will close the messenger instead of sending it to the tray as I expect it.
Y!M has many features that I don't need (e.g. voice calls - not suitable in an office with cubicles). But features like ''selective invisible'' or ''visible to friends only'' as ICQ had it already in the pre-AOL days are missing.
Sometimes messages are not making it through
You cannot see if your chat partner is typing as in MSN messenger. In fact, you don't even see that when you are in a 2-way chat window.
All in all, Y!M works, but it is not perfect. I mainly use it because for my circle of online friends, it seems to be the standard. Or is it the other way around? Do I know them because they also use Y!M ?
