Yahoo! Messenger: The Instant Messenger for Yahoo! fans
I've never been a particularly big fan of Yahoo! products and so I tested Yahoo! Messenger with more than a little trepidation. Whenever a product is specifically designed for Windows users and is then finally rolled out for Mac, the results can be less than impressive - and so it seems with Yahoo! Messenger. First, the good points. The interface is fine. There's nothing that makes it stand out from other Instant Messenger interfaces but it's clean and not cluttered with ads or banners. My main problem is that I have hardly any Yahoo! contacts but fortunately, this latest version finally adds support for MSN contacts.
To add an MSN contact, you have to CMD-click on the main interface and select 'Add new contact'. I thought this could have been made clearer and it only allows the adding of contacts one-by-one - not entire accounts, which is a real pain if you've got lots of contacts. You can also add LCS and Lotus Sametime contacts, although who on Earth uses those nowadays I have no idea.
Overall, using Yahoo! Messenger is a frustrating experience. For instance, I was pleased to read it apparently has iSight support (unlike the basic version of MSN Messenger for Mac) but to my dismay, it simply doesn't work. There's also a possibility to phone people as with Skype by purchasing Phone Out credit but I really don't see the point of this unless the rates and plans are more competitive than Skype, which they're not. Yahoo! Messenger will only really appeal to Yahoo! die-hards that have a Yahoo! account and haven't yet discovered the pleasures of Adium.
