STEPS TO USE GOOGLE TALK
1.After installing google talk the contact list already gets populated as GT borrows the address book from gmail.The contacts need not be all gmail users.
You can change the contact list by the following ways:
a) Click on the view button at the bottom of the IM windows
--> To see only only Gmail users,deselect the "Show all Address Book Contacts"option.
2.Now you can see that the online contacts have a green circle to their left and an "Available" Subscript.
-->Even If the contact in your contact list is only using Gmail's standard with chat interface,the status will be "Available"--but you cannot use voice in this case.
You can However have your own status and thats very simple.
a) select custom message and then type your own desired message there.
b)you can set your status message to the current track your media player is playing.
3.Starting an IM session
a) Double clicking on any of your online friends,opens a chat box.
b)Then to send message type a message and press enter.
c) Now there's another option to send message to a friend who is using the standard with chat version of gmail-the message will pop-up in your friends browser.
But like other IM's you will not be able to add similies or change the font colour or strength easily.
Actually GT keeps things pretty austere.
4.Starting a Voice chat
a)Click on call button-after that if you have your headset properly set then you could have a voice chat along with text-chat.
b)There would be three buttons:
-->Email Button:This button is,ofcouse,meant for quickly sending over an email,though we might be wondering that who would do that while chatting.
NOTE:Another useful feature is that the microphone and output sound levels are contollable via sliders right in the chat window>use them to set the appropriate levels,if you didn't already do it before you began the chat session.
-->End Call:This would end the current call.
-->Mute: This would mute sound as we do it in our computers or laptops.
c)If a person is offline,then you could also record your voice and send it directly to the the persons gmail inbox.Then there would be a message containing the recorded voice and this could be then downloaded in MP3 format and then played in media players like winamp or windows media player.
CONFIGURING GOOGLE TALK
The controls are much simpler and easy to access since there are no three level deep menu systems to navigate.Though in the seeting dialog box there are fewer options to be tweaked as compared to other IM clients.
1)Besides the View and add contact buttons there is a setting link which can be used to configure the GT.
2)Cosmetic changes like Skin and themes,and changing the font styles and strength can be done through the settings link.
3)The headphone and mic settings for voice chat can also be set here.
4)By default a history of your chats are stored in the gmail account.This can be disabled in the setting link.
So Using google talk is simple but it can be quiet a problem in navigation for newbie's.
Therefore whoever has just started using google talk should surely read this.
I hope you found this information about google talk useful.
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