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 then 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 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.*Download
*Yahoo! Messenger 3.0.2 Beta* in Softonic
