Google Talk

So Google Talk was released today, and I've been using it a bit.

It's got a nice, clean, simple interface, but the simplicity comes at the cost of configurability. It has some nice features, but fewer than msn messenger (especially with msgplus). I haven't tried any of the voice stuff, since it won't work very well over dial-up anyway. Here's a quick review:

Some of the cool things:

• You can set your status to show when you're chatting, and you can set custom status messages
  
• Apparently handles multiple conversations nicely
• Integrates the gmail notifier functionality
• The chat window icon on the task bar shows when the person you're chatting to is typing
• All chats with a particular contact are shown in the same window - even if you close it, the history is restored when next you chat (I assume this is on a per-day basis)
• Easy to rename contacts
• Auto adds contacts from your gmail address book that have talk installed (I'm not sure if this is good or bad, actually)
• Not so susceptible to random sign-outs as msn
  
• Doesn't repeat "Whoever says:" for each new line the person types
  

Some of the not-so-cool things:

• You can't set where your conversation logs are stored
• You can't set the frequency at which it checks your gmail
• The chat window icon on the task bar doesn't show the person you're chatting to's status (well, it would be cool if it did, but it's not exactly a flaw)
  
• You can only chat to gmail users
• It's yet another IM client that I need to have open
• No "appear offline" feature
• No event log (like in msgplus)
• Don't seem to be able to group online/offline, or custom groups
• No display pictures
• No file transfer
• No smilies
• Doesn't log your conversations (says it does, and it must because it keeps a conversation history, but it's not in a human-readable format)
• Can't set timeouts for changing status to "away"; no config for changing status to "busy"
  

Some buggy things (apparently others don't all have these problems, but I doubt it's just me):

• Help takes you to maps help
• The minimize button for the chat window doesn't work if you've opened the talk main window during the conversation
• The "inbox" links don't work
• The "Application settings" link/button doesn't work
• Closing the search box doesn't.

This is just what I've noticed about the features I use - it doesn't support things like online games like msn either, but I never really use those anyway; ditto for msgplus sound stuff.

Overall - well, it's cool, and I'm sure it's going places (I've seen some ideas about integrating it with google maps, etc), but is it worth switching? But seeing as you're probably not going to get all your existing msn contacts (or whatever IM you use) to switch to google talk, it's not really a question of switching to talk so much as adding talk to your list of IM clients - I guess it comes down to whether there's anyone you want to talk to who only uses talk :-)