My takes on email and IM

I would rank Yahoo Email on top of others for its ease of use and the features it offers. I've almost stopped using my Hotmail because of the number of junk mails I've been getting there. Too much! Gmail is a innovative one but still doesn't offer much of what Yahoo is offering. Any how, they are still in beta and these guys deserve more time. Till then, it's Yaaaaahoooooooo!

I really can't differentiate between MSN messenger and Yahoo messenger with respect to their features but I use Yahoo all the time except when I use voice chat. Yahoo has an issue when we do voice chatting. It doesn't allow simultanous talk. That is both the callers can't talk at the same time. If one speaks the other has to wait... It's so difficult for people who just cut short the others while talking! I've not tried using the recently released Yahoo messenger with Voice for voice chatting yet as my friends haven't yet downloaded it. Till then it's MSN for voice chatting and of course the newly launched Google Talk. I tried voice chatting with Google talk and find it good. Let it evolve. BTW, Yahoo updated its messenger today.

I still like Yahoo Messenger

I've been using it for the past few days and find its voice quality better than Yahoo and on par with MSN. But, I still like Yahoo messenger for all its "completeness" (if that's a word I can use). In fact, Yahoo came up with an update to its very recent update "yahoo messenger with Voice". I'm not sure on this new update with regards to its features. Will have to study that. It's all exciting to see this competition between Yahoo, Google and MSN.

IM, Mails and Search are the three mostly used internet applications and with each of these three competing fiercely with each other, I'm sure the end users will benefit more.

Google Talk - The IM from Google

I was one of the earliest person to lay hands on Google Talk. My Yahoo RSS picked up a link that gave the path to Google Talk and being in India (when the western world was still sleeping), I immediately installed it and tried it out.

It's a primitive messenger with limited features compared to Yahoo Messenger or MSN messenger. But, it serves the basic purpose of sending messages and voice chatting.

The best part of Google Talk is that the voice chat works even if you are behind a proxy. Neither Yahoo or MSN support that yet (at least they don't work in my office). So, I would definitely have it apart from yahoo and MSN.

As Google is increasing its portfolio one by one, I'm waiting for its own browser to debut by early 2006. Who wouldn't want to try Google's browser?