Google Talk Labs Edition- Pros And Cons
Google Talk Labs Edition is an experimental release of the Google Talk client. It has a nice interface and also brings in some new features.
Here are the pros and cons of this experimental version of Google Talk:-
Pros
1: Smilies or Emoticans
Finally, Google talk team decided that emoticans are a feature they cannot give a miss and hence decided to include that in the labs edition.
2: Launch Google Calendar And Orkut
Yes, you can launch Google Calendar and Orkut directly from this edition of Google Talk.
3: Tabbed interface
Google Talk Labs edition has a tabbed interface where you can have multiple chats in tabs. This is quite useful for those who chat with more than one person at a time.
4: Notifications for Google Calendar events and Orkut scraps.
Apart from notifying you when you get an email in your Gmail account, it also notifies you for your Google Calendar events and Orkut Scraps. I personally like the Google Calendar notification, because now you don’t need to check the Google Calendar again and again for different tasks or events.
Cons
1: Windows Only
Currently it is Windows only, however I am sure that once this product graduates out of the labs, it’ll have a Mac and Linux version too.
2: No Voice calling
This is an important feature which is missing in this edition of Google Talk client. I am not sure why Google Talk team decided to do away with this feature but if you use Gtalk for voice calling then this edition is not for you.
3: No file transfer
Yes Google Talk Labs edition does not allow file transfer. So you’ll have to rely on your gmail for that, while chatting.
So what do you think? Will you go ahead and try out this labs edition of Google Talk ?
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I’ll tell you my primary and sole concern with the Labs Edition… I can’t PASTE anything into the darn window! I’ll often cut and paste URLs into message windows as I chat with folks. That’s a main requirement for this user… I’m surprised that I haven’t heard other folks complaining about this restriction.
Cheers,
Mungo
Others pros:
- group chat
- reading youtube video directly in gtalk (didn’t test for video.google)
- same for flickr album (didn’t test in picasa)
Others cons:
- no copy/paste (com’on you have to set one variable on flash to activate this dude)
- not so smouth comparing to the first desktop version
- cannot seperate each conversation from the main bloc
- not displaying contacts which you are waiting confirmation of invitation
- cannot rename/block/remove contact from the application (possible on the first desktop version)
- cannot see time of the last sentence
- history have a strange comportment (and for apps user which don’t have a gmail account, you cant access to your contacts or your pasts chats)
I’m currently keeping my old gtalk application and using the web based only when groups chat is necessary. I guess we just have to wait for the next release to see some improvments (I’m sure they will focus on the web based version).
Still doesn’t seem to be smart enough to prevent a chat window opening in Gmail instead of at the task bar.
Repeat after me,
IM is not a file transfer protocol
SMTP is not a file transfer protocol
scp and sftp are OpenSSH are current client utilities that are appropriate to move files around
fak3r
@ Jeremy- I have tried out the labs edition and it does have problems.
Considering that its in beta, we can expect hurdles with this labs edition. But I hope things improve if it is officially released to the public.