BitWise IM is een zeer uitgebreide instant messenger en kan daarnaast ook nog eens bestanden uitwisselen via het Direct Connect protocol. Ondersteuning voor het encryptie algoritme Blowfish, voice-chats met Speex audio compressie, whiteboards en het organiseren van online conferenties is aanwezig. Het pakket wordt onder een hele reeks voorwaarden uitgebracht die op deze pagina overzichtelijk zijn na te lezen. De eerste bètaversie is beschikbaar van BitWise IM 1.7 met de volgende veranderingen:
1.7 Beta 1 offers two major usability enhancements: 75% reduced lag when messaging and automatic UDP configuration for voice chat. What does this mean? Dial-up users will no longer experience long message delays and you no longer need to configure your router or firewall for UDP traffic to use voice chat. Minor enhancements and bug fixes round out this Beta release.
Even though the changes are fewer in quantity, we are using this release for some version-number shuffling. Rather than this being 1.0.7, it is 1.7. Continuing to number releases as 1.0.x makes them sound very close to 1.0, which they are definitely not. This also means that our next major release will be 2.0, not 1.1, much more in line with what everyone is used to.
Version 1.7 beta:
- Reduced lag during/between message transmission by 75%, very noticable on maxed out dial-up connections.
- New voice protocol that does not require UDP forwarding or firewall setup by either party, in most cases.
- When receiving voice data is delayed, catch up to real-time (i.e. drop old data) when data resumes.
- Added option to "Conversation" menu allowing you to temporarily disable macro processing.
- Conversations windows flash using "new message" setting when a file transfer is complete.
- Buttons on file transfer manager correctly update when automatically resuming the selected file.
- Fixed newline differences (Windows vs. Linux/Mac) from triggering Plus Key mismatch warnings.
- Fixed UDP Alert window from continuing to show even after checking not to show the alert again.
- Mac: Changed default audio buffer to 50 from 25 to alleviate choppy audio problems.