Prime Cut

AOL has been a giant in instant messaging because of its large user database. With ICQ, owned by AOL, and their own sizeable network, I've always wondered why the quality of their instant messenger has fallen by the wayside. Why kill one of your greatest assets?

Now AOL gives its instant messenger a long overdue upgrade. It looks like a good upgrade. There are some features I wish Yahoo would have, like the long wished for tabbed chat window. Trillian has had it for a while, and it's nice to see a free messenger other than GAIM (yuk) implement it. Overall, AIM uses tabs effectively to keep things organized.

My judgments are based on the pictures and flash demo. I do not know if it attempts to install malware or displays ads all over the place. From the images, it looks like the ad on the main window is gone. Thank God! Ads in IM... bah!

Yahoo Messenger is almost perfect. Just give me a tabbed chat window!