The other day, I downloaded Google Talk. I installed it on my laptop, and on a few computers for my kids. Today, I’ve talked a little bit with them via Google Talk and want to share my impressions.

First, I should note that my primary machine is about a 1996 vintage Compaq file server. It is running Windows NT version 4.0 and doesn’t have much space left on the C drive, so I like to load programs over on my E drive. This presents two problems for Google Talk. The first is that Google Talk won’t work on Windows NT 4.0. The second is that even if you try to install it, you don’t have the ability to have it install on the E drive. It puts things on the C drive without offering a choice.

The interface is very simple and they say you can’t change the font with Google Talk, at least yet. However, if you put a word or phrase within asterisks, that causes Google Talk to display the word of phrase in bold type. Also, the standard emoticons :) end up showing up in blue.

I did a little bit with the voice aspect but my daughter didn’t have a microphone so I could talk to her, but she couldn’t talk back. I’m sure that older folks might like this configuration and younger folks might complain about how it illustrates that adults never listen.

As I started reading a little bit more, I found a pointer to ‘Miranda’. Miranda is a nice lightweight multi-protocol IM client. I downloaded it to my laptop and really like it. It claims to work properly on NT 4.0, but I haven’t managed to get it to work properly there yet.

Like so many multi-protocol clients, getting them to work with the major IM services is supposed to happen, but there always seems to be glitches. However, it works quite nicely with Google Talk and with IRC.

What I like best about Google Talk is that it is based on Jabber and could go a long way in moving towards better IM interoperability.

So, for the time being, Google Talk is my IM of choice. Drop me a message on it sometime. My username there is ahynes1