User Reviews

"Talk is a nice implementation of the talk program that I've seen on Unix and VMS mini/mainframes. I don't use it the way the manual says I should. I find running talkd at startup hangs my system, so I just open talk itself when I expect to talk with someone. Still seems a little buggy if I close and reopen without rebooting."
—Andrew Starr

"Unfortunately, Talk is the only talk client for the Mac (at least that I know of) available. That's too bad. I find myself using Telnet instead. While Peter Lewis has ported various Unix functions to the Mac with Mac ease of use, Talk is too dumbed down. Talk is nowhere near the quality of Wintel counterparts like WinTalk. Of course, Peter lacks Bill's budget. Nonetheless, Talk has varying success depending on your server and its flavor of Unix. For example, on my network, it is only useful if the person you are trying to contact has a static IP. In this case, you can run a talk session by using "user@0.0.0.0." Since I most often need to run a session with someone on the other side of a tty, it fails for me in this respect. Furthermore, while I can usually get talk to find someone with a dynamic IP via WinTalk or (Unix) talk by using "user@servername.domain.com.", Talk will only work with an IP address. Please, if there's a software company out there, please spare me from the snickering of the Unix Jihad and the Windows Militia and build a competitive talk client."
—Jay Valenta

"Very stripped down and rudimentary compared to Windows programs such as Wintalk. But it does work and is fairly stable, though I have had complaints from people I'm talking to. Unfortunately seems to be the only option for the Mac."
—JJ Mayes