Voice support and mail alerts now available

May 2, 2008 12:58 GMT  ·  By

Ever since the Sunnyvale-based company announced the availability of Yahoo Messenger for Vista, users out there downloaded and tested the application even if it was only a preview of the upcoming IM client. Unfortunately, this very early version of the program provided a limited number of functions so users couldn't really test too much of it. Today, Yahoo debuts a new edition of Yahoo Messenger for Vista which incorporates several functions which have already been introduced in the other versions of the application, namely YM 8 and YM 9 Beta: voice support and SMS functions.

Obviously, the voice support lets users of Yahoo Messenger communicate by voice through Yahoo's in-house VoIP technology. Earlier this week, Yahoo announced a deal with JAJAH, a popular communications company which would provide the Phone In and Phone Out Yahoo Messenger functions. However, YM's PC-to-PC calls will still be based on Yahoo's own solution.

"You can now make free PC-to-PC calls to other Yahoo! Messenger friends, or if you have a Phone Out account, make low-cost calls to landlines and mobile phones for as low as 1? a minute (see rates). Our new voice features also include fun Voice Visualizations that animate you and your friends' voices while you're on a call," Josh Jacobson, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo! Messenger for Vista, introduced the new voice function.

Beside the voice support, Yahoo has also introduced mail notifications for all the users who want to be informed as soon as a new message arrives in their Yahoo Mail account. Every time you receive a new mail, a tiny notification will be displayed in the System Tray, allowing you to login into your Ymail account with a single click, just like in the previous versions of Yahoo Messenger.

If you want to download this latest release of Yahoo Messenger for Vista, you can take it straight from Softpedia using this link. Please note that it only works with Windows Vista so there's no chance to get it work on other platforms.