The people in charge of the popular instant messaging program from Yahoo want you, the Windows Vista user, to download, install and put YM 9.0 through its paces. When the software program crashes or does not work properly (and expect it to do so because there are some serious Vista – YM 9.0 compatibility issues) you are very much encouraged to let Yahoo in on the problem. The overall goal of all this testing is to work out all the bugs in the instant messaging program and provide users running Windows Vista with a more enjoyable user experience.

Sarah Bacon, Product Manager with Yahoo Messenger acknowledges the fact that YM 9.0 has the potential to crash when launched on Windows Vista, and does so quite often. It is a frustrating issue that has both teams (Yahoo on one side and the users on the other) frustrated and annoyed. Yahoo wants to fix the problem and will eventually do so, but if you pitch in and help, the problem will be solved a lot sooner.

“We would especially like to hear from users that are willing to spend some time with us on the phone to troubleshoot the issues they’re having. If you are willing to participate, please include your phone number and the best time to reach you in the email,” said Sarah Bacon on the official Yahoo Messenger Blog.

The bottom line is that if you are running Windows Vista on your machine and the YM 9.0 program you installed on it is running amok, you should adopt the only viable option: send the YM team an email message (the address is vistatestig-at-yahoo-dot-com). Please note that the previously mentioned email address is in obfuscated form. This way you will not only be able to pass on your problem, you may also get a test version of YM 9.0 to put through its paces.