Yahoo! Messenger

Appeal: Simple and easy to use.
Interface: Bright and colorful.
Communication: Free. It’s cheaper than talking with friends and families over the telephone.

Advantage: Fonts and text size can be customized. They have a contact organizer that can actually separate friends, family members and colleagues. Sharing photos to your contacts removes the hassle of sending them each photo. Maintain archives for your messages. Send real time instant messengers to your friends on Yahoo! Plus you can customize your online status message for your friends to see. Get notified when there’s a new mail arrives. Liven your chat windows with its IMvironment feature.

But: Yahoo Messenger shuts out Mac users. Yahoo provides an online knowledge base but no e-mail chat support.
Edge: Stealth / Privacy Settings.
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5

Windows Live Messenger Plus!

Appeal: Organized.
Interface: Bright and colorful.
Communication: Messenger Plus! is freeware and you are encouraged to send it to your friends. You’ll never have to pay a dime to benefit from all the features of the program.
Advantage: Complete change for the look of your Messenger windows with easy-to-install skins can now be done. Index all your conversations automatically for an archive. The Custom Emotion Sounds feature allows users to send their own pre-recorded sounds during a conversation. Creating customized away and busy statuses with special name tags, personal messages and even an auto-responder is really fun. Now, a timer can even reset your status after a certain amount of time and organize your presets for fast repeated access. You can drag and drop messages or links into these to send a message to the contact, or drop a file to start a transfer. New emotion sounds can also easily be created from existing sound files (such as MP3s) or recorded live from a microphone or another audio source. Everything can be logged, even custom emoticons are kept and winks shown as thumbnails.

Edge: Messenger can be password protected and messages can automatically be sent to your contacts to inform them of a lock or unlock. Messenger Plus! does not contain any kind of spyware or trojan either.
But: The e-mail service that it works with can be annoying and utterly slow at times and crashes sometimes.
Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5  (This is my personal favorite and the one that I use)

Skype

Appeal: Minimal, clean and simple to use.
Interface: Blunt but more organized.
Communication: First call is FREE. Unlimited calls to landlines and mobile phones worldwide!
Advantage: Great value call, features discounted international calls. You can call phones and mobiles anywhere at low rates. Send SMS directly from Skype. Call forwarding service is available when you are offline. Great call quality and free use of high quality video calls. Also, Skype can be personalized.

Edge: An online number is perfect if you have friends, family or business colleagues who don’t use Skype. Anyone can dial your online number from any phone or mobile and hey presto, your Skype rings and you pick up the call – wherever you are in the world.
But: Skype cannot be used for emergency calls.
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5

Google Talk

Appeal: Dull and boring. This will all change with the release of Google Wave!
Interface: Simple.
Communication: Powered by google and its FREE.
Advantage: Chat with family and friends over the Internet for free. See real-time availability and status of friends online. You can even send instant text messages and easily goes from text to voice chat.
And chat right from your desktop or from Gmail.
Edge: Native language advantage. Google Talk now has transliteration bots that will convert text from English to Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil or Telugu.
But: Voice feature only works with the Google Talk program which is currently only available in Windows. And it only requires Windows XP/Vista. Features are limited.
Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Meebo

Appeal: User-friendly.
Interface: Simple.
Communication: Web-based.
Advantage: It is extremely fast even on old computers, does not slow down the computer one bit, works on almost any kind of browsers, allows you to log on to the most popular types of IM at once. The friend/buddy lists are exactly the same as on your original messenger system, and you can change it to fit better. You can also receive offline messages in meebo, so there’s no need for an individual download of instant messengers.
Edge: Allows you to enter one ID and log into all of your favorite IM accounts (Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk, Jabber). Meebo loads twice – three times faster.
But: It’s web-based, Meebo’s missing some of the advanced features (like Video Chat or File Transfers) found in other desktop IM clients.
Overall Rating: 3.5out of 5

Your Online Security Authority

Bill Wardell

Related articles by Zemanta

• Search Google, Yahoo, Bing & Twitter From Your IM Program (makeuseof.com)
• Yahoo Messenger 10 Offline Installer (techblissonline.com)

Written by: OSAblogger / Bill Wardell - Please Read Our Latest OSA eZine Edition

Other Places You Can Find Me…

Digg - LinkedIn - OSA Community - Facebook - StumbleUpon - MyBlogLog

If you're a concerned parent, you may want to subscribe to the: OSA~RSS while your here, please JOIN our: OSA Forum... also Follow Me On Twitter Thanks for visiting!

OSA Technorati Tags: Amount Of Time, Audio Source, Auto Responder, Chat Windows, E Mail, Emoticons, Friends Family, instant messengers, Mac Users, Name Tags, New Emotion, New Mail, Online Knowledge Base, Personal Messages, Privacy Settings, Sharing Photos, Sound Files, Status Message, Statuses, Yahoo Messenger

OSA Related Posts

• Review Me This is a "Sponsored Post" for the Review Me website. What a great idea for a creating a win-win situation for promoting a service or website reviews used as an promotional tool where you bring advertisers and bloggers together by giving them both a place to share their thoughts critiques about each other......
• Wait till the MySpace Generation hits the Workforce Image via CrunchBase I’ve talked about this before, and it’s one of my counter points that blogging is NOT a fad -- as the next generation of workers are already blogging and sharing online. In a few years, blogs will be as common as instant messaging, and maybe even......
• Why Are We As People So Trusting? I was reading an article on the Keeping Our Children Safe website and they related part of the story “A Street Car Named Desire” and compared it to how we depend on the kindness of strangers, even in today’s online cyber world. Decades ago, our parents and grandparents warned us......
• Keeping Your Money Safe On the Internet: 10 Methods You Can Ensure Online Banking Security Got money? That makes you the most attractive person on the internet, even more so if you regularly conduct business online. To keep your identity and money safe, here are 10 methods you should use to ensure your banking security online: 1.Computer code, types of viruses, analysis software, Security software......
• Does Your Company Need Product Liability Insurance? You may not have considered product liability insurance if your company works in an area that doesn't legally require it. But you may still be wise to consider it anyway. Yes, undoubtedly you produce top notch products that function well and are well made, so you might think nobody would......

OSA Related Websites

• Dedicated Server Hosting Serves Up Solid Solutions Using dedicated server hosting for your website can improve your businesses competitiveness in this economic climate If you are a small business looking to set up a website, deciding between shared and dedicated server hosting may be easier than you think. You are in a race everyday, with more competitors......
• Text message to any phone SMS (short message service) can be expensive. My carrier charges 15 cents a message...incoming or outgoing. Before I signed on a contract with built in messaging, I would wake up and hope that no one would text me so I can save a few cents a day. Even with my......
• Google Adsense Calling Mork! Google Adsense Calling Mork!   Google Adsense Calling Mork! Amazingly, following my comment about Google Adsense on my website in yesterday's rant about Phorm, I got a message this early morning from the mother ship (Dalek voice - "Monetize! Monetize!").  This is the text which millions of Morks across the globe......
• Features of Virtual PBX Service The features of virtual PBX service are similar to those incorporated in expensive phone systems used by big companies. These sophisticated call handling features include: Auto attendant Find me follow me call forwarding Caller identity Voice mail Voice to email Fax Fax to email Music on holdReduce Your Telecom......
• ROBO — Research Online Buy Offline study by Yahoo ROBO — Research Online Buy Offline is a term coined by Yahoo. They just completed a study that shows how Internet research by consumers is affecting offline sales. If you're one of those business people who claims no one buys our products online, this is an article you seriously need......