Acting on a Slashdot tip last night, I managed to connect to the Google Talk IM using [Gaim], an awesome Linux instant messaging client. Didn’t actually do anything with it, but it was neat to see it up and running.
This morning, Google Talk officially releases as a beta: [Google Talk]
What is going to make Google Talk better than the big boys like Yahoo or MSN?
UPDATE: I tried the voice chat with a co-worker and the voice quality was very good. I was particularly impressed on two counts:
1- I was listening to Thievery Corporation at the time, and my co-workers voice was perfectly audible and coherent while the music was playing.
2- I was speaking through a built-in microphone that my work laptop must have, and the sound quality was still pretty good. My co-worker and I even switched seats to hear how the other sounded, I thought the audio was pretty good on both ends of the conversation.