I'm not sure how many people have seen this yet, but I installed it earlier today.
As it's a Beta and AOL I was expecting it to be pretty similar to AOL9.0 and AIM. What Triton does is provide quite frankly a more refreshing desktop solution.
AIM for me has been a sticking point for the past 2 years. I only use it because a single person (who means a lot to me) uses it, and seems to refuse the whole "MSN Messenger" thing. Something I truely hate about AIM is the simple fact that.
2-3minutes of talking can add almost 8-10MB of RAM useage. The longer you have it on the more RAM AIM eats up. After a full-day of use it easily has eaten almost 200MB of RAM, obviously some memory leak; but one that AOL haven't fixed for the 5years I've been force to used the dumbass thing.
Here's where Triton enters. Not only does the core application run leaner than AIM (16.9MB compared to 16MB Boot + 8-32MB Per Window) but it also seems to run without any major RAM eating issues.
The new look is also very nice, with some extremely pleasing colour schemes and effects. AIM Radio (Realplay Based) is now active constantly rather than simply when you wan to use it, so start time for that is basically on-demand. This includes full Video Access as well.
What really has me impressed more is this version comes with AOL Explorer. This is AOL's rejuvenation of the Internet Explorer 6.0 platform... what's more it doesn't have the same memory leak problems, nor is it big. In-fact the entire application folder is 60KB.
The browser looks stunning, and is fully featured. Although I'm still not a fan of the whole Mozilla TAB + Google Search Bar Setup.
Still the new side panels more than make up for this providing quick links to everything you care to do.
I'm also quite happy about the RSS implimentation. God knows why Microsoft hasn't added this feature properly to Explorer 6 is beyond me. While Explorer 7 is in closed Beta (and won't install on anything other than XP SP2 English) can't say I care much for this whole wait.
On the whole though I'm extremely impressed with what AOL have been able to put together, and it is certainly work checking out when you have the time.
http://www.aim.com/get_aim/win/win_beta.adp?aolp=
