I really like the Google Apps service. The price is right, the email offering is brilliant and the value is sky-high. I don’t think I’ve smiled so much since the day I finished migrating our folks off of an old Exchange server to the hosted Google offering. 
However.
Being behind the curve on all the new feature releases is a bit tedious and annoying. I mean geeze… we Premier Apps customers are actually paying for this stuff! Yet the freebie GMail users always get the goods first, it seems.
For instance, I have most of the folks at the office running the Google Talk application. It generally works well for IM and does a fine job as an email notifier also. Did you see the recent announcement about Gmail’s built-in chat? Group chat and fancy emoticons.
Group Chat! Brilliant, with that I can get rid of Windows Live Messenger!
Oh wait.
These features only work with the latest version of Gmail, which we are still rolling out to IE6, international and Google Apps users.
Bah.
Today, another cool feature was announced: Colored Labels. Cool! A great way to help visually arrange things. I think this will really help get folks using and thinking about labels for email organization.
Guess what… not in the Apps version of Gmail yet. *sigh*
Hey, while combing Google blogs. I just noticed that the Google Talk Gadget has had group chat since last June. On that issue, I shouldn’t be whining about Google Apps, I should be begging for a Google Talk upgrade. mea culpa!
Speaking of that Google Talk Gadget, I can add it to my Google Apps custom Start Page. However, have you looked at the Google Apps start page recently? Remember what iGoogle looked like well over a year ago? Yeah. Primitive. That’s what we get.
Go compare that to iGoogle. Functional? You bet. But… kinda meh too.
The widgets are wonky too. I’ve got about a 50/50 chance of seeing my agenda listed in my calendar widget. Sometimes a refresh will get it to show. Sometimes (like above) not.
And be careful clicking around or suddenly you do end up at iGoogle, but on the Google Apps credentials which really confuses things…
So yeah, I really do love the Google Apps stuff. Honest! But dang, I sure wish we were a bit more current and got the good stuff sooner/at all.
Ok, vent mode off now.
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December 4th, 2007 
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You completely failed to mention that my gtalk blurb keeps telling me it can chat with AIM. Does your paid for version do that?
Yeah. I know. I just hadn’t commented in a while is all.
Rich!
I *just* saw the AIM blog posting, but haven’t had a chance to find out if I can do it from GApps yet (gaps! oh sweet nickname, come to papa)
I think the idea is pretty much in the line of “let’s get the freebie people test stuff before we break it for the paying customers”…I know I’d do it that way, for that reason.
And yes, I’ve just been busy as all hell, but that’s life.
I agree with Vox. i think the free users are doing final beta testing. They guarantee 99.9% uptime, so I think they are being cautious before messing with paying customers.
Ok, Vox and Nathan… even if you guys are wrong it sure makes sense. I’ll play along with your rationalizations.
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