Okay, on first use of the Google Talk IM client, it gives a nice clean interface with none of the clutter of Yahoo Messenger or the MSN messenger. You can send text messages or call them at the click of a button. A mouse button that is! ;-)
Well that’s where the positive points end. The client is extremely barebones. No frills and alike. It does not even support emoticons/smileys which everyone else is so used to. The write box in IM message windows is not resizable and provides only a single line of typing.
It does not support invisible mode when you want to be logged in to the network but do not want to be available to others.
Though Google Talk is supposed to be supported by all open source IM clients, there is a catch. You cannot use voice chatting with any of the client except the official Google client. And very conviniently, google has skipped releasing clients for Linux and the MacOS. So if you want to use Google Talk, chat with your friends, first purchase MS windows and use the official google client. Quite an expensive talk I would say ;-)
On the whole, summarising it, there is nothing breakthrough in the Google Talk client. Infact it is sorely lacking in features and completely ignores non-windows users. I feel the release was a rush job by google and they only wanted to release the application for the sake of releasing a new product and nothing more. Atleast till more features are available, I will not be using google talk and will be available only on my favorite Yahoo Messenger :-D
Thus speaketh