Entered CNET Catalog: 05/04/2005
SKU: SERVAOLAIMTRITONBETA
Manufacturer: America Online, Inc.
Product summary
The good: AIM Triton 1.2 preview offers a free inbound telephone number; free video, voice, and mobile chatting with buddies; drag-and-drop file and photo sharing; chats with ICQ users.
The bad: AIM Triton 1.2 preview lacks the synchronized file sharing of Windows Live Messenger; lacks free outbound telephone calling; Windows only.
The bottom line: AIM Triton 1.2 preview lets you easily chat via text, audio, or video and share photos and files with other users. However, while it provides a free phone number, you'll have to pay to make outbound calls.
Editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 07/26/2006
AOL's instant-messaging brand, AIM, has stiff competition that includes chat with each other, their combined user base exceeds that of AIM. Rumors abound that AIM will join this alliance, but at this point no such developments exist.
In our tests, it took about a minute to download AIM Triton 1.2 preview. Think before you click during installation to avoid placing yourself on advertising lists or changing the default options on your system. For example, uncheck the options for installing AOL Explorer and Toolbar if you don't need them.
We were able to log in to AIM Triton beta with a handle from a canceled AOL account, but oddly, we couldn't use that handle to set up AIM's free Phoneline calling service. Instead, to obtain an AIM Phoneline telephone number, we created a new sign-in name and password.
The narrow, blue-and-white interface of AIM Triton is easy to scoot to the edge of your screen, leaving desktop space for other tasks, and we found it less obtrusive than its Yahoo and Windows Live rivals. Within its interface, AIM Triton displays small icons linking to other AOL properties--Mail, Talk Center, Video and Radio--as well as, unfortunately, a rotating graphical ad. The File, Edit, and View drop-down menus are easy to figure out, and a handy contact-search field lies below the Buddies and Addresses tab.
The chat window is well designed, with tabs for messaging via text, voice, or video and for sharing pictures and files. But type into the Search the Web field and, unlike the embedded search of Yahoo Messenger with Voice 8 beta, AIM opens another browser window. Our main beef with Triton's interface isn't the design of the app itself, but the way its links kept littering our desktop with browser windows.
To dress up your chatting, you can click AOL Expressions from the Edit menu and pick from both noncommercial and branded backgrounds and avatars that dance and sing. However cute a talking starfish may be for kids, after a day of the cartoon's wisecracks, we reverted to our bare-bones, icon-free Triton backdrop. If you prefer an emoticon-free, encrypted chatting service for the office, we recommend trying AIM Pro.
Because AIM Triton 1.2 preview ties into the Plaxo Universal Address Book service, you can import contacts into your IM account from Microsoft Outlook, as well as e-mail accounts from Yahoo, Hotmail, and Windows Live. You can make your own profile private within Triton, but unfortunately, once you're registered with the address book service, you also permit Plaxo to send reminders to contacts to update their details. If suspicious strangers ping you, AIM provides a link for reporting and blocking them, but we still prefer Windows Live Messenger's more obvious security bar.
If you already use AIM and don't want to sign up for a third-party VoIP service, such as Skype, AIM's Phoneline service provides you with a phone number with voicemail and caller ID. To try the service, we plugged in a headset to our computer, shared our number with friends, and were able to receive calls and voice messages from them over the Internet within a few minutes. When we answered a call, however, Triton didn't open the chat window to control the call, so it took some fumbling to figure out how to hang up.
You can try Triton's free Phoneline service or pay $9.94 per month to make unlimited calls to landline phones in 30 countries, as well as to mobile phones within the United States, Canada, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Unlike Yahoo Messenger with Voice 8 beta, which displays your voice calling communications within its interface, Triton uses its own Phoneline Dashboard to display your calls and contacts on a Web browser page --a bit less convenient. However, Yahoo charges $2.99 per month for use of a telephone number, which expires once you stop paying, forcing you to get another number if you sign up again. And the calling rates within Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger vary, from around 2 cents per minute up to $1 per minute for international calls. Globe-trotting chatterboxes may find AIM Phoneline offers the best deal.
To share content while communicating, you can drag and drop photos and files into your AIM Triton chats. Sharing photos went without a hitch, except for when we sent pictures to a buddy while she was idle, and the images took nearly a minute on her end to appear after she reactivated our chat. With a swipe of the mouse, we sent another buddy more than 12MB worth of documents within a matter of seconds. On the receiving end, Triton prompts you to allow or block the file transfer. However, we prefer the approach of Windows Live Messenger; it opens a file-sharing folder that scans and cleans documents for potential security threats. AIM Triton 1.2 preview also allowed us to drag and drop photos, which our buddy could play as a slide show, then save locally. Triton's video chatting with other users via Webcams was also easy, although Windows Live Messenger has better image quality, and both suffer some lag time.
Help for this beta version of AIM Triton 1.2 comes in the form of searchable online resources and a tutorial for getting started, an ordinary level of support for free software. But multiple windows kept popping up as we attempted to click around the support page, and there's no help via e-mail.
AIM Triton 1.2 preview isn't a final product, and we ran into some speed bumps. For example, at one point the AIM icon kept flashing on our screen even though we didn't seem to have any new messages. All in all, though, we find AIM Triton 1.2 preview to be worthwhile if you already use AIM and would like the added bonus of having a local phone number, along with photo and file sharing abilities.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19out of 19 user reviews
Not worth it ! Don't waste your time !
Pros: real time chat
Cons: buggy, has spyware and lack of support
out of 19 user reviews
Lack of support, rude tech support !
Pros: chat with people on AOL
Cons: no tech support !
out of 19 user reviews
New look...new problems.
Pros: Brand new look, integration with Adress Books.
Cons: Hidden installations, unacceptably slow.
Even worse, AIM Triton includes AOL Explorer whether you like it or not. It's a hidden installation, making it impossible to remove unless you remove the whole suite.
Don't let AIM Triton's new look fool you. It still needs to be tweaked for a while before I recommend it.
out of 19 user reviews
absolutely awful -- huge step backward
Pros: doesn't try to kill you in your sleep... that's about it
Cons: very reduced functionality, annoying new browser
out of 19 user reviews
Don't do it! It's a memory Pig and fragile
Pros: Looks cool
Cons: Slows PC to a crawl, takes over your PC with AOL
Insidious product
out of 19 user reviews
Nice touches but is extremely slow, often freezing my computer
Pros: Great that you can give the actual name of the user instead of haing to guess who they are each time.
Cons: Appallingly slow.
out of 19 user reviews
This is bad
Pros: Sleak Look
Cons: Unwanted Ad-ons; IE crashes; Slow
out of 19 user reviews
A version of AIM that has horrible things to choose from
Pros: Looks good
Cons: EVERYTHING. You cannot have a buddy icon, you cannot direct connect, there'es no window color...it stinks
out of 19 user reviews
One step foward, five steps back. Unless you heartily embrace all things AOL, stay far, far away.
Pros: (finally) has tabbed chatting; support for video and audio chat
Cons: Still has adware galore; tons of proprietary AOL garbage is installed along with it.
For AOL users living under a rock, triton could be good news: it adds more features like tabbed chatting, as well as audio and video chat. Keep in mind none of these features are new- they've been standard for almost every other chat client in existence. However, one major shortcoming of the program (and the reason I still don't touch AOL's AIM) is that little thing called ADWARE.
When I began installing the triton beta, I had high hopes that AOL had cleaned up its act. I was expecting a slightly-bugged but leaner and meaner ad-free version of AIM.
I couldn't have been more wrong. Since AIM is the most widely-used chat client, AOL took the liberty to cram the AIM install with every product it could think of. The installer first added an "AOL Explorer" browser which tried repeatedly to make itself the default, as well as some kind of address/contact synchronization software. It also grafted an AOL toolbar onto Windows' Internet Explorer and changed the homepage to AOL, just in case I opened that browser by mistake (good thing I use Firefox). To remind me that AOL had just made my computer its b*tch, it generously added three or four "AOL service" shortcuts on my desktop. I have never seen one program try so hard to take over my computer.
Despite this gut-wrenching upset, I proceeded to chat with several buddies to see how triton's interface worked. The layout is more intuitive, if a tad odd: it seems to be geared towards multitasking audio/video/text chat fanatics (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). However, the integrated ad-banner is more evil and intrusive: god help you if you mouse over the ad window.
While Triton itself is overall a definite improvement over the older AIM, it lies buried deep inside a pile of AOL's garbage software.
Don't get me wrong- I don't just blindly hate AOL and wait eagerly for their demise (they do own Winamp after all). I just wish they weren't so hell-bent on dominating every computer they touch by installing the integrated AOL universe, when all we want to do is chat.
out of 19 user reviews
Don't download!
Pros: Prettier than before, and tabbed browsing is a plus!
Cons: Have fun trying to close it!
I made the mistake of downloading this, don't be like me!
out of 19 user reviews
terrible-DONT GET
Pros: features sound cool on paper
Cons: very confusing interface and such a big jump from 5.9 that i didnt like it
out of 19 user reviews
Decent, If You Can Login to Service
Pros: Tabbed IMs
Cons: Hangs at Validating Step for Some -- Cannot Login, Forcefully Installs AOL Explorer, Resource Hog
out of 19 user reviews
Has a lot of potential
Pros: A slew of new features that you used to need a plug in for are now standard.
Cons: some classic AIM features are harder to get to or non-existant
I obviously first noticed the extreme change in the interface. It took some getting used to. I think the interface on AIM 5.9 is a bit more intuitive. I missed having buttons for common actions such as looking at a buddy's profile, but I got used to just right clicking pretty quickly. I also wasn't thrilled about that I also had to download the AOL browser as well. That was just plain annoying, because it gets used for everything relating to AIM - including profiles. I didn't like that at all. And I found that the interface is starting to give me a bit of a headache. If it was a bit darker I think it would be better. In the final release, I hope they give users the option of selecting the interface they have now and a more "classic AIM" look for people who would like to conserve RAM.
I do love the features that they've added on though. Sadly, I havent been able to check out the vocal features yet because my microphone is at home while I'm at college. I also noiced that they've taken away the option to make a default text/background color combination. I do miss that a bit.
I'm very glad that they added aliases and tabbing. Up to this point, that was the only thing I would change about AIM. There is one little issue that I have with the tabbed window, when you push the X in the upper right corner to close a convorsation like me and im sure many others are used to, it closes all of the convorsations. I hope they either change it to close just the current convorsation, or have a dialog window asking if you want to close more than one convorsation.
Overall, I'm pleased with Triton. I probably will keep it, I just hope that they make some improvements before replacing what they have now.
out of 19 user reviews
Disappointed in hog of memory
Pros: Great new look and features
Cons: takes up almost 20x more ram than aim 5.9
out of 19 user reviews
Good improvement
Pros: Easy to send files, more features
Cons: Has some bugs, can be slow on dialup
out of 19 user reviews
Way to go -- headed in the right direction!
Pros: no more multiple windows and conference calling looks cool.
Cons: can't wait for the next beta
out of 19 user reviews
Better than 5.9, but still is AOL.
Pros: Cool interface, can rename your buddies so you know who they are, has an address book, can report people right from your IM window, tabbed messaging.
Cons: Still has the ad but you can get around that, Never really know when it is running
out of 19 user reviews
Not very good at all...
Pros: Its good looking....
Cons: very lacking in features. Very hard to navigate, hard to learn ,etc
out of 19 user reviews
Showing Potential
Pros: Pretty Interface, Easier more streamlined UI, tight integration with other new AOL products, new features such as searching and "IM Catcher"
Cons: Still pretty bare, advertisements still present, still very reminiscent of current AIM app.
