Google Talk for Windows 98?
Written on 02/23/06 at 15:38:39 EST by Jack Deth
SoftwareNow that I see myself using a Windows 98SE based system temporarily at work from time to time, I figured I would grab a copy of GoogleTalk to be able to see if I get emails easily...

Low and Behold it seems that Google Talk is only available for Windows 2000/XP/2003
Knowing Google Talk is just a glorified Jabber client, I went looking for a possible solution to this problem.

True you can use Jabber clients like:


I also found these web-based solutions during my search:



But I then found a beta version of GoogleTalk that claimed to be able to run on Windows 98!!!!
Its an old Beta from 2005, so you would think that the current release would have the ability to run on Win98, but they must've cut the support for 98 due to incompatabilities, or under an agreement with Micro$loth they could've cut support to encourage more upgraders to the system.

So, I downloaded the Beta versions of GoogleTalk which claimed to be able to run on Windows 98 and installed it on my system, Only to find that none of them actually ran...

Searching some more gave me more references to running Google Talk on Win98 using other clients...  such as the PSI info page here: http://psi-im.org/wiki/Google_Talk_HowTo
Or Googles own page on configuring GAIM for GoogleTalk here: http://www.google.com/support/talk/bin/answer.py?answer=24073 might be considered a possible solution.  Looks like GoogleTalk isnt going to be the big hit Google was hoping for and for some reason they dont seem too interested in trying to get the Win98/ME crowd sucked into their own client.

Mac OSX Users can use Adium - http://www.adiumx.com/ to get into GoogleTalk as well as a boatload of other IM's

Seeing this I decided to test out some of the other solutions for GoogleTalk on Windows98...  unfortunately the "Wow" factor is now Gone, just as GoogleTalks build-up for all users is now gone as we see a very basic client, too basic to really enjoy using it.

Looks like I will try PSI out and see how that goes...

Looking at some of the beta versions, it seems as though GoogleTalk did at one time run in Windows 98!!!
So, If anyone has a copy of the old beta that does run in Win98, Drop me a line here or leave a comment on this article as I would like to try this out.

JD
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 Some News for Windows 98 Users...
Written on 04/06/06 at 03:59:27 EST by Jack Deth
Since Gmail integrated their Google Chat into the gmail pages themselves, this has removed most of my need for a Windows98 GoogleTalk client, as I dont need it for Voice on this machine.

This is an awkward and sometimes slow approach, using the coding built into gmail instead of an actual client, BUT it does seem to work well enough to be a non-installing solution.
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