Very impressed with Google Talk. Both the Chat and the Voice are clear and simple to use. I really hope it takes off. I've been using Skype since the early days and I loved it. Problem I had was with the company. Their purchasing system sucks! They have this fraud prevention attitude that is denying honest customers to purchase and making it virtually impossible to use the paid system. Their tech support sucks and in general the company's attitude is of not being very considerate with it's customers. I hope Google kicks their **** a bit. It's a shame about Skype though...seeing they use Indy as part of their system (Yes, not the VoIP but still). What is funny though is the reviews that are coming out about Google Talk. I've read some stuff that simply amazes me:
"...yuck! It's like going back to DOS it's so simple"
"...It doesn't have multi-user chat"
Do these people understand that this is the first version of a product that is currently in beta (or alpha?). I think Google has taken the best possible approach. They have deployed a system to existing "beta" users, therefore I feel it's logicl that you require a GMail account at this point, and let them test the "technology", the BASIC technology, i.e. two-way chat/voice. Once they have that tested then they can start adding fancy stuff and features. Bloating up a client with stock market quotes, etc. in it's early stage where it hasn't been tested out in the "wild" yet, IMHO is a waste of time. To be honest, I've never understood why people that use something such as ICQ (and in particular ICQ for Windows Mobile) would want to have stock quotes. Most people I know that use IM are developers or "geeks" that love chatting. They are not high-flying executives or people that are actively investing in the stock market. Anyway that's beside the point. This a the first "public" version of a beta product, I'm sure we'll see many exciting and new features shortly. And btw, I loved DR-DOS, what's so bad about DOS?