computerwoche.de

Archiv

AOL's AIM Pro still in the amateur league

27.07.2006
Last week, AOL LLC released a new business-oriented instant messaging client called AIM Pro. The client offers some interesting features, but it's only available for the Windows operating system and doesn't come close to delivering what the private IM networks and clients of Microsoft Corp. and IBM's Lotus have to offer.

Available as a free download, AIM Pro offers encrypted communications -- as long as you're talking to another AIM Pro user and not with someone from the general instant messaging population who is running another client. But this is something that the private networks have had since Day One. AIM Pro also offers voice chats and the ability for users to send files to one another. It communicates with all of the various AOL IM network users, including ICQ and AIM, and with other clients that run over them, such as Trillian, iChat and Adium -- to name a few.

It also includes support for desktop screen sharing and webconferencing. Both aspects of this are provided through WebEx, which works only on Windows and with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.

The interface for AIM Pro is different from that of the current AIM client software: Pro has tabs called IM, Voice, Videos, Share (for desktop sharing) and Files. Regular AIM has tabs called Text, Talk, Video, Pictures and Files. The buddy list windows of the regular AIM client that had tabs for Buddies and Addresses have been replaced with tabs called Contacts and Calendar. This latter feature is for sharing events with Outlook's calendar, but you need to install Service Pack 4 to take advantage of it.

Lotus SameTime and Jabber offer both Mac and Linux clients with most of the functionality of AIM Pro -- if not more. This is a big deal because in the world of IM you don't know who you're going to be communicating with, and given instant messaging's popularity, chances are you will IM someone who isn't on Windows and can't take advantage of all of its features.

The AIM Pro client has a couple of things going for it. First of all is it's price -- like the other AIM clients, it's free. The one caveat is that users of the webconferencing feature will need to pay WebEx for access to meetings, while one-to-one desktop sharing is gratis.