AIM 7 Beta released 5/15/09

[VvWolverinevV]

From beta.aol.com:

The AIM team is happy to invite you to test AIM 7 Beta 1. We've been listening to your feedback and talking to AIM users about how they communicate and we're making some big improvements that we think you'll love. This is an early beta, we're still working on adding features, but we want to give you chance to take a look and give us feeback as we build the next version of AIM. Check out the beta and let us know what you think.
Notes: AIM 7 will install over AIM 6 if you upgrade and does not support plugins. AIM 7 no longer has saved away messages.
What's new in this version:

• New look and feel! We've got a redesigned user interface that we think you'll love.
• Better performance. We've been under the hood tweaking the software to make it run faster and use less of your PC's resources.
• Bigger buddy icons! What's not to love about that?
• Buddy icon cropper. Click on your icon near the top of your buddy list and you can pick a picture off of your PC and zoom in on your face for a great buddy icon.
• Big status entry area. We make it really easy to see your current status message. Also, when you change from online to away we'll put your cursor in the status message so you can tell people what you're up to.
• New advertisement size and placement. We think the new ad fits better in the buddy list and hope you agree.

It's a rather crass beta. I've already gotten it to crash and encountered a few errors less than an hour after installation. But at least it's not as bad as Yahoo!'s betas (which seem to have a build cycle of about 6 months...) But I digress. If you're not scared of a few crashes every now and then, give it a go. The new look and feel is generally refreshing after nearly 3 years of AIM6.

Happy beta'ing :-D