“””Welcome to the Stone Age of instant messaging!” Ken Fisher, a Ph.D. student, wrote at PC resource site Ars Technica. His review deemed Google’s service “Spartan” for its failure to allow file transfers and group chats, and for its lack of emoticons and “skins,” or customized, decorative graphics.”
File transfers: Yes, I definitely think they should add this feature. IM clients are no match for true file transferring methods, but quick transfers (e.g. “take a look at this request box”) during messaging are invaluable for me.
Group chats: I’ve very rarely used the group chat feature (mainly just when testing it out of curiosity), but I know YMMV and I respect that. Can’t quite see though, why not use IRC if you need this feature a lot.
Lack of emoticons and other decorative graphics: Fuck that! I’ve turned emoticons off long ago and have been a lot happier since. Would be even happier if MSN allowed me to strip all “decorative” graphics from it; most of it is entirely useless and annoying. The first thing I liked about Google Talk was the simple looks this guy calls Spartan. Again, I’m not saying nobody should like these features, but, for crying out loud, don’t force it on everybody as default!