The new Yahoo! Messenger Version 8 is released quiet some time before. Is it worth upgrading from pervious version ? The answer from my point will certainly be "NO".
What are all new features
a. International Call facility (Already available in 7 and above)
b. Talk with MSN users (Really new feature and really wonderful)
c. Plugins instead of TABS. (Cool to watch but really too much buggy)
d. Good address book search facility.
e. Nothing much more..
Ok.. The features are really looking very attractive. The features are tied with many disadvantages. International call facility is not used by users largely outside US and also not widely used by PC users who prefer to chat with from PC to PC rather.
Talking with MSN users, if it has been done long ago.. which includes only typing (chat) facility then it would have been a success. But integrating services is a important thing,(may be will do in future), how ever in both sides instead of the feature that both are inter operatable nothing else.
Plugins, huh.. what to say.. Very cool when i saw first. it has cool animating opening and closing, updating, safe mode etc. I am using yahoo finance portfolio which always gives me hell a lot of bug. It always throws script error and asks me whether i want to close or debug? Almost 100 times a day at least. Then what happened my old classic games TAB in which i will see my friends score whether i am competing with them or not.. like bounce out top scores.. is GONE.. and they say fancyful PLUGIns.
Aargh.. still lots n lots n lots of bugs are there in Yahoo messenger version 8. Above all there is one major disadvantage. For systems which are running on low resources it is going to be very painful. Yahoo messenger consumes over 59K of memory with plugins off. even in minimized state or running at background as service. Earlier yahoo messenger was using around 14K to 20K of memory.
Saved Passwords are truncated.. (may be yahoo is thinking as security to not show number of characters).
When i am using my messenger in my office i will be invisible and stealth mode to few of the office personalls. But many times it automatically goes to available mode when there is any break of internet and reconnection.
Yahoo has not improved on User Interfaces.. which follows same as version 6.
Yahoo Messenger 5 to Yahoo messenger 6 was a worthwhile upgrade. Bugs were v minimum.
Yahoo Messenger 7+ onwards bug rates are high. Even i found many problems with Yahoo messenger 7.5. Thus i m back to Yahoo Messenger 7. I am quiet happy with the features and less bugs.
I would be happy to upgrade to a bug free Yahoo messenger version 8+ when it is available..