With Yahoo! messenger for Vista (beta) preview version launched in December last year, at least some collaboration seems to be in place between Microsoft and Yahoo! Now the latter has announced release of a voice-enabled beta version of Yahoo! Messenger for Vista.

Included with Vista-specific Messenger are voice and SMS, a voice visualization feature, and other improvements that Yahoo! says will help improve their messenger's overall speed and stability.

With the Yahoo messenger software, users can now make free PC-to-PC calls to other Yahoo! Messenger friends, or make paid calls to landlines and mobile phones. New voice features also include fun voice visualizations that animate users and their friends voices while they are on a call.

Free text-messaging to mobile phones (SMS) will also be possible through this version for Vista. That means, when you send a message to someone's phone, you will receive the reply on your messenger window. While it is free for a user to send SMS messages from messenger, there are charges applicable for receiving an SMS on mobile phone, depending on the mobile data plan. Other features include the option to receive a pop-up alert when you have new Yahoo! Mail.

Yahoo! says these are just the initial features for its messenger for Vista. Gradually, this version will include popular features of the classic version of Yahoo! messenger.