Well, aside from everyone (including myself) bashing the name of Google’s new PC-to-PC voice service, I just had to write my own report on my findings from using it over the last few days. As you will see in
Jason Pullara’s Google Talk review, the sound quality is quite impressive when compared to widely used PC-to-PC voice software such as Skype, and MSN Messenger.

I recently had the opportunity to use the new service to speak live on The Chris Pirillo Show, and the sound quality was truly impressive. It sounded almost as if Chris and I were sitting right next to each other, even though I was in Toronto, Canada and he was in Seattle.

I was also able to use the service to speak to some friends and family who are still using dial-up Internet service. I wanted to see exactly how the service quality varied from speaking to Chris (who also has high speed Internet), versus others with a 56k dial-up connection. Surprisingly, the quality of both the connection and the audio quality was relatively good (considering the small amount of bandwidth that dial-up Internet allows). The noticeable differences between speaking to someone on Google Talk who has a broadband connection, and someone who has a dial-up connection is that there is a longer delay on dial-up connections. There is virtually no delay when speaking to someone who is talking over a broadband connection, but there is a 1-2 second delay when you are speaking to someone who is using dial-up. Aside from the delay, there was the occasional drop out of audio. That said, the actual sound quality was pretty good. Also worth mentioning is the fact that when the Google Talk user on a dial-up connection would terminate other programs that are using the internet (such as other IMs, e-mail clients, Web browsers, etc.), the connection would be significantly better. The delay didn’t improve much, however there were virtually no audio drop outs.

So, overall, I’ve found Google Talk to be significantly better than some of its competitors in terms of sound quality and reliability, however the user interface could be improved (and most likely will be with future releases of the software).

To download Google Talk, click here. Note however, that you must have a Gmail account to be able to use the Google Talk service.

Some other interesting articles about Google Talk from fellow Lockergnome writers:

“Google Talk Launched” by Robin Good

“Google Talk, Chris Pirillo, And Gurgeling Goo” by Jason Pullara

“Google Talk is Pretty Cool” by Jason Pullara