On Wednesday AOL (this blog's parent company) released AIM 6.0 for Windows. The first major update to the popular instant messaging program since AIM Triton a year ago, AIM 6.0 comes with another visual update and a few new features.Some of the features are ones we've been enjoying a long time in our other IM clients, like IM logging, but I'm finding them pretty well-executed. AIM now supports up to 1,000 buddies and does offline messages, too. There's also a new picture-sharing feature that takes the form of a slideshow window you can drag and drop photos onto, integration with AIM Pages and AIM Phoneline, the latter of which will be especially welcome to VoIP lovers. I'm a fan of AIM 6.0's new look, which is cleaner and less clunky than AIM Triton, which wasn't bad itself. The client also seems to have gotten some much-needed performance improvements--it runs a bit faster, but still uses about six times as much memory as Trillian.

Like AIM Triton, AIM 6.0 was built with AOL's GUI toolkit Boxely, which is based on XML and JavaScript, and which allows for some very interesting customization opportunities. For example, it took me about 30 seconds to figure out how to remove the ad box from the top of my buddy list, and all I needed was Notepad (shhh, don't tell anyone I told you that). A more dedicated hacker could take the opportunity to completely re-theme the interface or even add new functionality. And I really hope they do.

All in all, AIM 6.0 still isn't a program I'm going to use every day. However, I am impressed with the direction AIM seems to be headed, and its VoIP and file-sharing capabilities mean I'll probably break it out once in awhile. If you're already happily using AIM Triton or an older version of AIM, I highly recommend AIM 6.0. If you're a power-user, you're not really AIM 6.0's target market, and should stick with Trillian or GAIM--unless you're intrigued by Boxely's hackability.

You can find a couple screenshots of AIM 6.0 in action after the jump.