Yahoo! IM 5.5 - not ready yet

Yahoo! released their 5.5 version of Y! IM recently (shortly after the 5.5 beta), and it's really not ready for prime time. There are some new features that look promising, such as a much higher-res camera (and a "super" mode that streams a at much higher rate in peer-to-peer mode), but all my friends who've gone to 5.5 have downgraded for the same reasons.

The webcam support - though higher resolution - is strangely blurry, and it's annoying as hell. The additional bummer is that a 5.5 webcam can't be seen by a 5.0 user.

The most annoying for me is that the little "ZZZZ has logged on" notifications that appear in the lower right are no longer always on top. This means that if I've got my browser window maximized, I'll hear the knock-knock-knock of a friend coming online, but I have to quickly hit the Window-M sequence to minimize all my windows to see who it was. This is exceptionally irritating.

Thankfully I saved the 5.0 installer available upon request and was able to downgrade myself and my friends, but even this doesn't make Y! IM a perfect experience.

There have been longstanding problems with the Y! servers too: now and then I get logon/logoff notifications for people who are not on my buddy list, and once in a while it's for somebody I've never heard of. A friend is having the same problem. Refreshing my online friend list (with control-R) sometimes toggles friends who are online or offline, and I get logged out now and then randomly. AOL IM has never ever had these kinds of stability problems.

My final annoyance with Y! IM is that there doesn't seem to be an official channel that I can find for reporting bugs. I have the email addresses of the developers, but there is just no way you should have to "know somebody" to report problems, and I simply won't pester these people.

I would love to have a paid option that perhaps enabled some features, gave access to tech support, and disabled the ads in the webcam. For me, something like $50/year would be a no-brainer - where do I send the money?

I wish more people would support the subscription model, which is based on the bizarre notion that paying for a service is more likely to have that service stick around for a while. I'm much better served by a Y! that makes money on me than by a service that goes away due to a bad business model even if I got it for free.

Posted by Steve at September 08, 2002 12:33 PM | TrackBack