Microbits

After playing around with the client and server, here are my thoughts.

Server

Setup is pretty simple for any Linux admin. May pose problems for inexperienced admins.

The latest update (beta2), required a manual SQL diff and subsequent manual insert to enable the new permissions. I’m guessing they’ll fix this in future releases.

Client

The client UI has been completely redesigned. The default sound notifications are kind of annoying. I switched to the TTS sound pack and turned 90% of them off.

General

It seems like the  “clan server” option has been removed in favor of “subscribing” to channels. Basically, users aren’t visible unless you are subscribed to the channel they are in, or are in the channel. There’s a button and several menu options to subscribe to all channels.

The permission system is one of the most powerful I’ve seen; however, the documentation isn’t as complete as I’d like.

It certainly doesn’t look like vaporware anymore. Over the past few months, it’s looked less and less like vaporware (with more frequent status updates, screenshots, etc), and more like an actual product that will get released.

The open beta was announced (for Dec 19, 2009). I have a feeling this is going to go one of three ways:

• Worst case – Full of bugs, completely unusable
• Possible case – Performance / quality issues, a reasonable number of minor bugs, interface issues
• Best case – Polished through the private Alpha tests, only a few minor bugs remain

If the development team pulls off what’s been discussed for the past year, it will blow Ventrilo completely out of the water.