Yahoo Messenger 7 - A Miss! » Ajay - On the Road called Life!

Yahoo Messenger 7 - A Miss!

Yahoo! today released their latest version (v7.0) of Messenger.

I had tried out the beta version during the release and gave them a lot of feedback through their feedback form. Maybe they don’t read their forms, or maybe they didn’t like what I wrote, because I didn’t find anything incorporated in the future betas or this final version.

Yes, you may ask why should they listen to me!?!
The answer is simple because I didn’t ask them to put anything new, but asked them to just keep the old

Two main reasons why I didn’t like this release:
1. Text recall feature. Pressing the up and down arrow keys used to recall the previously typed text both in the IM windows as well as the chat room. This was significantly missing in v7

2. Voice Auto-enables in Chat. This is one really really irritating “feature”. Whenever I get into a chat room voice chat is automatically enabled. Despite disabling it, once I change the room the voice gets renabled. What’s even worse is that it keeps throwing up a “Audio Mixer cannot be initialized”. I know I have my drivers installed and everything on my PC in perfect order. Besides, why is this the only application throwing up the error?
Lastly, I do not wish to use any of the voice features of Yahoo! for now and I do not have the option to disable voice.

3. It automatically launching my Mail client to send an email as opposed to letting me choose if I want to use my mail client or to use Yahoo! Mail

I do admit there are quite a few improvements / additions like the Spam Guard (though I don’t like it automatically adding spam ids to the block list).

I guess the main focus of this release has been the Voice call feature, however in the process other things have gotten sidelined. And sadly for me, since it keeps throwing up an error for the voice feature, I simply cannot even test it!

~~I have already written to Yahoo! Customer Care (their online Help site sucks)~~
I wrote to Yahoo! Customer Care (their online Help site sucks) and got a very vague reply telling me how I should go about enabling voice and with absolutely no reply to my query. However, their second reply was a little bit more informative and suggested that I should try something else or switch back to v6.0.

Chose the easy way out for now, viz. switched back to v6.0 and will continue to use it until I find a good change in the next release of Yahoo! Messenger.
And if I am forced to upgrade to the latest version (as many a times old versions get no longer supported), I will have no option but to shift to an alternate client like Trillian or Gaim.

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Post Details

Post Date :: Tuesday, Aug 9th, 2005 at 9:59 pm
Category :: Software & Service Reviews
Tags :: chat, IM, review, Software, yahoo messenger
Do More :: Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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20 Total Responses to “ Yahoo Messenger 7 - A Miss! ”

Comments:

Jerry says:
August 15th, 2005 at 9:06 am
Interesting.. Thanks for the info. will check it out soon
nalin says:
August 26th, 2005 at 6:46 pm
yeah Ajay, this voice chat auto-enabling is very irritating. And the final version of Y! 7 has no way of disabling it. I renamed the file yacsui.dll to _yacsui.dll in Yahoo! folder and now voice chat is disabled. It does, however, give me a small error while changing rooms, but atleast the ‘compulsory voice chat’ feature is gone for good
Ajay says:
August 26th, 2005 at 11:08 pm
What is the error that it throws up for you?

I kept getting an error everytime the room got changed and so got really very frustated with the whole deal!
nalin says:
August 26th, 2005 at 11:14 pm
“voice error”.
I click OK, and everything’s fine.
putra says:
September 16th, 2005 at 1:02 pm
hi,
do you guys know how to prevent from being ‘bomb’ when we are in the yahoo chat room?
My notebook always freeze when somebody do that.
Ajay says:
September 16th, 2005 at 8:45 pm
A good place I can point you to putra is http://www.carbonize.co.uk/Yahoo/
putra says:
September 17th, 2005 at 5:58 pm
Ajay!

thanks!
clamnectar says:
October 10th, 2005 at 9:08 pm
I have been using the net on the big picture a short time (since cooincidently 12SEP00) (yes 911 was my 365th day on line) however; I learned that yahoo wants to mess with you when your in chat thusly I (personally) switched to yahelite.
It gives you the ability to shut off (actually you have to turn it on) voice. Voice by default is not on.
It has a very neet feature also blocking the “drive bys” when a bunch of bots pop up when your minding your own business and they come into a room.

ang
Ajay says:
October 10th, 2005 at 10:44 pm
Will give YahELite a shot. For those interested the url is http://www.yahelite.org/
clamnectar says:
October 11th, 2005 at 1:06 pm
re: elite, be sure to install the ycabby file (from the files section of elite)(fifth up from the bottom)after you down load the full program.
It fixes some of the idiocyncracies of elite for voice and cam.
Also check out “layout” under format to do any layout changes that are readily customiseable in elite as it is limited by your imiganization.

Incidently while in elite you can (with another in elite) chooze a seperate public voice room that only those that know the name will be able to get to by typing in the main room( /vj ) and leave a space then the name of the voice room you want to go to. ie….. /vj darn that will put you into a room called darn that anyone anywhere in the world in elite can go to.
Kind of good when someone in the room is messing with the room per one of the other poster in this site re; “Bomb” also when that happens and your hear the kachink if you shut voice off immediately (like in elite) you may avert the lagging (it does go away in a few seconds)

A funny side bar if you type /egg in the room a very strange visual of the rooms follows. There are four different visuals. Play with it a bit. To shut that one off the command is /noegg. Enjoy.

Oh one more thing the voice is a seperate “item” in elite so you can leave a room and shut down elite and still be in voice in that room. It (the voice) must be shut down indipendently of the chat room. There are a few things to “get use to” in elite but is a “GREAT” program.

ang
Ajay says:
October 11th, 2005 at 9:39 pm
Thanks ang, already gave elite a shot yesterday. Quite a good program I must admit.

For once I had a peaceful chat in Yahoo! without being bothered by bots every single minute.

Have gone ahead and installed YCabby, though I don’t use Cam or voice.
tulip says:
December 4th, 2005 at 4:54 pm
i agree with u that there is no way to disable voice in the 7.0 version of yahoo msgr.But there r still solutions to it as they say nothing is impossible in the world.

U can either use yahelite (the latest versioin is better)or

if u find it difficuilt to use and want to stick to yahoo msgr for its(user friendliness)then disable “audio compression” from:

Add/remove programs>>windows accesories

which u will find in control panel
(this is for win98 users only cos i dunno the proceedure for other versions)
and your problem of auto-enabling of voice will be solved permanentely.Though however u will have to “ok” a msg appearing again and again whenever u join a room which is really irritating but still better then the auto voice enabling feature i guess !!!
tulip says:
December 4th, 2005 at 5:02 pm
seems like i m adverising for yahelite but no yahelite provides u a good level of protection from booters ,voice bombs , spam msgs too. i suggest give it a try!
Ajay says:
December 4th, 2005 at 7:59 pm
I already am using Yahelite whenever I wanna get onto a chat room.

An indirect way of disabling voice is to choose the Connection method as Firewall without proxies or others and try which works best.

Haven’t tried is personally because like I said I started using yahelite
Moiz says:
March 26th, 2006 at 2:19 am
Hey Ajay,

U can recall text on Y!7 by the Alt+ ‘up’ or ‘down’ arrow keys.

Hope tht helps, to start with.
Ajay says:
March 26th, 2006 at 10:18 am
Hey Moiz,

Thanks for that vital piece of information. I didn’t even realize there was a change like this.
clamnectar says:
March 27th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
latest update for elite; voice: if in im or in the room you type voicechat with the on the right end (it wouldn’t let me show the thing as is should be in this post) then a name like what I previously used darn or what ever that will take you instantly to the room for voice that is seperate.
Again type (without the spaces and leave a space then the name of the voice room you want to create and click on it yourself and send it to anyone it is much easier than the /vj thing.
clamnectar says:
March 27th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
the has has to have no spaces and the symbols on the right and left of the voice chat command are the upper case of the period and the upper case of the comma with the upper case of the comma on the left and upper case of the period on the right with no spaces then a space and what ever room name you want. whew
Andy says:
August 2nd, 2006 at 4:17 am
Hi,

To enable and disable voice in yahoo you can use this program I wrote (yes it annoyed me too!

Yahoo Messenger Voice Chat Toggle

Hope this helps,
- Andy
hawklhr says:
August 31st, 2006 at 5:01 pm
hi,
do you guys know how to prevent from being ‘bomb’ when we are in the yahoo chat room?
My notebook always freeze when somebody do that.
Ajay has already suggested a web link but i didn’t find any think to stop these kind of bombs.
Thanks