AIM VS AIM

AOL Messenger is America's favorite instant messenger. Not long ago, AOL created a beta team which gave birth to several, very interesting projects. Among them was AIM Triton, which represents an enhanced version of the old AOL Messenger with a new user interface and features.

And since the latest version of AOL Messenger was released 8 months ago, while new versions of Triton are released every month, it's very clear to everybody what will soon become the official AOL instant messenger.

But we cannot accept a change of this sort without asking ourselves: What are the differences? Well, let's take a look at what lies behind and ahead our chatting fingertips.

Comparing... the main window

AOL Messenger has a pretty dull main window. If you'll ignore the annoying top banner, you just might say there is no color. Furthermore the text is the same for groups and buddies, the only difference being the use of bold or italic. Of course there are some things that I liked, but where's a plus, there's also a minus. A plus goes to the buttons: five very well chosen buttons for sending an instant message (IM), chatting (Chat), seeing a buddy's info (Info), setting your away message (Away) and quick access to the options (Setup). But the buttons also get a minus: Although they're very well chosen, a few more, let's say for talking or address book, wouldn't have hurt. And a personal note: I like my buttons in the upper side of the window; they seem much more accessible there. Another plus goes to the eye. The eye is a very easy and fast way to choose your status. With just one click you can be visible or invisible. The bad part is that, if you're not a curios person, you might just not find out about this cool feature.

Triton on the other side has an eye catching interface. The window has more colors, the groups and buddies are shown in a different way. Here are some very useful additions: mail, talk and radio buttons, an address book, a "find in buddy list" form. Not so useful are the buttons in this new version. You will now see three buttons: IM, Talk and Actions. If the first two are useful, the Actions button doesn't actually list any action of interest.

Comparing... the chat window

There aren't a lot of good things to say about the AOL Messenger chat window. The first thing I've noticed and certainly did not like is related to the buttons. It's quite silly actually. While important buttons, which would be used very often in a conversation (bold, insert smiley, text color, etc), are small, whereas buttons that you would rarely use are huge (block, expressions, games, video, talk). The waste of space doesn't end here: I really don't understand why the left side of the chat window is almost? blank. Also, there is no information about the user you're chatting with, not even important information like his/her status.

Triton's chat window solves most of these problems. There are no more huge, useless buttons and the buttons used to format the text are more accessible and easy to use. When you want to start a new conversation you will surely notice the information about the user "at the other end of the line". Another great feature found in Triton's chat window is the use of tabs. There are four of them: Text, Talk, Video and Files. The first three represent the ways you can chat with the other person: text chat, voice chat and video chat. The fourth tab, Files, displays a window from where you can send files to the other person. Another addition to the Triton chat window is the automatic display of recent history. Let's say you've closed by mistake a chat window; reopening the window will automatically display your chat history with that person since you last logged in.

As you can see, the new features and interface of AIM Triton make this messenger a great replacement for the old AOL Messenger. The only major problem with Triton is related to resource usage: sadly you might see it consuming between 10 and 30 MB of memory. Of course, there are some other annoying problems that you will find in both versions, like the banner in the main window, only the 3 types of status (available, idle and away) or the third party software. But still, it's very clear that AOL's beta team has put a lot time and work into this new messenger that will surely make you forget about its old, dusty predecessor and give your messaging a new, cool feel.

AIM VS AIM

America's favorite messenger: past and future