November 23rd, 2005
AOL AIM Triton
Looks like AOL has launched its new
AOL Instant Messenger client , “Triton”,
at least in the US. Intriguing that they’re using an “I AM”
theme for their launch messages — hasn’t that been done before? Not
just by Lotus?
Looking under the covers….new catch-up
features include easier audio/video chat and file transfer; tabbed IM UI,
and chat history. The UI is cleaner and seems straightforward, though
why AOL felt like they had to mess with the visuals of the existing emoticons,
I don’t know. The new emoticons are ugly. The whole UI feels
a lot slower, too.
As is typical with AOL IM, a bunch of
new crap was installed along with the AIM upgrade. The main one is
a slow browser shell called AOL Explorer. I always love spending
ten minutes undoing this stuff.
AOL is more heavily promoting AIM Mail
as a free mail service for AIM users. The marketing stuff emphasizes
that this mail service has an “unsend” feature. What they
don’t say — it only works with other AIM Mail users. Not real useful.
Overall a worthwhile upgrade for a few
of the key features, but not a “wow”. I’m sure I’ll get
asked somewhere in here why I don’t use Trillian or whatever. Honestly,
I’m content to have AOL IM be my only public IM service. I’m allergic
to MSN, and while I’ve been using Skype more, its IM features are weaker
than the others. I guess it’s simply that I’m focusing on one tool
and don’t need the distraction of others.
Originally by Ed Brill from Ed Brill on November 23, 2005, 6:51am
