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...back when they introduced chat within Gmail. Suddenly people who could not install chat clients at work due to IT policies were perfectly able to chat with other Gmail users. I used to be a big user of Yahoo messenger, ever since web based chat started hardly anyone I know uses it anymore. As for MSN/Live, the less said the better - old accounts seem to have been taken over for spam. It took several years for Yahoo to play catch up and offer chat within their webmail, but it's too late.
(This of course excludes IRC users and those who have their own Jabber setups).
I now use the open source Windows client Miranda IM - fully featured, has a 64bit version, supports all popular networks including Jabber and extensible via plugins.

Crimson Editor

Good text editors for Windows are hard to find. I was looking for these features:

# White text on black background
# Syntax highlighting
# Tabs
# Spell checker (preferably a smart one which ignores HTML tags, keywords etc)
# Small and fast
# Hard word wrapping
# Preferably open source / free

CE is the only one I have found so far that meets those requirements. I checked JuffEd (no white on black), Metapad (no syntax highlighting), Notepad++ (spell checker is not realtime), Notetab Free, Programmers File Editor (pretty basic), Programmers Notepad (no spell checker). PSPad, RJ TextEd (good but slow), ConTEXT (no spell checker), gEdit (pretty good, a bit large due to being a Unix port, most plug-ins don't work on Windows), jEdit (Java based, need I say more?) and a few more, but none of the met the requirements.

Miranda IM (instant messaging client)
Hyrdra IRC (IRC client)
Cadsoft EAGLE (schematic and PCB layout)

I wrote about this some time ago, right here.

The short and simple answer, that should fully meet your needs, is to install jabberd2, configure it as needed (should have a logging module/plugin somewhere), and then to use Miranda IM with only the XMPP components as the client. Miranda is very easy to customize; if you don't want a protocol you simply don't include the relevant DLL.

Note: the links on that page are dead, namely the ones to the MSI installer package that I built. If you have a need for it, feel free to drop me an e-mail (the /. address should be fine).

Would be happy to know if there's something more stable.

Try Miranda.. far more stable; very configurable.. http://www.miranda-im.org/

I use the GTK Theme Selector and themes from http://art.gnome.org/themes/gtk2/ to theme Pidgin.

For IM use under KDE, you might want to try Kopete instead of Pidgin. Here is their website: http://kopete.kde.org/. It will probably entail less hoop-jumping to theme, etc than a Gnome app running under KDE.

Soon there will also be Linux and OSX ports of Digsby if you are into the social networking aspect of the internet. It also supports the MSN protocol.

For the really adventurous, I am sure you can port MirandaIM over to Linux. The client and source are GPL and are freely available. I think someone from Russia has already done this: http://forums.miranda-im.org/showthread.php?t=4624&highlight=Miranda+IM+Linux

Pidgin sucks anyways. Miranda IM is much nicer, has more options and more plugins.

or they could implement something like they have in miranda, where just about anything is a plugin that can be replaced if the user so wants.

thats one of the few places where a windows app beats a linux app in flexibility imo.

http://www.miranda-im.org/

My IM client of choice on Windows is Miranda. I quit using Trillian Pro in favor of Miranda.

Miranda is also open source and comes in at 1100KB verses 11MB for Pidgin.

Or better yet, Miranda IM. It's not as easy to use as Pidgin but its much smaller. I haven't checked memory usage but I assume that it uses less of that too.

If you use Windows I cannot sufficiently recommend Miranda IM. It's very lightweight (3MB download, 8MB RAM active) multi-IM client. You might call it the Foobar of Windows IM clients. It's got a fantastic community writing plugins and providing support on the official forums. The plugins are really numerous and cool too - Skype APIs, LCD display functionality, log analyzers, IM platform add-ons, out-of-office automators, a Windows uptime util, and hundreds more. It's also got great multinational localizations.

I switched to Miranda from GAIM (which I switched to from Trillian) and I haven't regretted it for one moment. It's very snappy and responsive, it automatically resizes vertically depending on how many contacts are online, it appears and disappears with a single click of the tray icon, it auto-updates the base program as well as the plugins... I could go on and on.

Give it a try. It's free! http://www.miranda-im.org/

If you use Windows I cannot sufficiently recommend Miranda IM. It's very lightweight (3MB download, 8MB RAM active) multi-IM client. You might call it the Foobar of Windows IM clients. It's got a fantastic community writing plugins and providing support on the official forums. The plugins are really numerous and cool too - Skype APIs, LCD display functionality, log analyzers, IM platform add-ons, out-of-office automators, a Windows uptime util, and hundreds more. It's also got great multinational localizations.

I switched to Miranda from GAIM (which I switched to from Trillian) and I haven't regretted it for one moment. It's very snappy and responsive, it automatically resizes vertically depending on how many contacts are online, it appears and disappears with a single click of the tray icon, it auto-updates the base program as well as the plugins... I could go on and on.

Give it a try. It's free! http://www.miranda-im.org/

ya, it reminds me of the basic interface of the first versions of ICQ, ive been using it for some time, works very well. Only issue i have had is Yahoo disconnects me often enough. Installing a few add ons made this thing quite nice.
Clients Homepage

What about Miranda? It starts out minimal, supports all the regular IM service, and lets you extend it as far as you want with addons (there are many to choose from).

Now all we need is a decent client.

You mean, a bloated ad-ridden flashy clunky pile of junk that forces constant upgrades down your throat?

No thanks. I'd rather stick with Miranda/Sim which both support jabber as well.

There's also Trillian http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/, which is pretty but not OSS. Basic version if free, but you pay for a "pro" version if you want advanced features. I used it for a few years but switched to Miranda http://www.miranda-im.org/, which as the parent has noted is OSS, but Windows only. It is customizable to a ridiculous degree but works great right out of the box. I currently use it for AIM, ICQ, GTalk, YIM, Sametime and IRC.

I tried GAIM a couple years ago but hated the GUI too much to look at it every day. I'll take another look at it now.

The first thing you need to do, more or less straight away, is find a way to separate your email address from the place your email comes to rest. I have a domain AND an account with Spamgourmet. One is for fighting spam, but both are so I can hand out addresses that are independant from whatever service I choose to use to actually receive my mail. This allows you to easily leave crappy places that force ads on you or otherwise stuff up your mail. Start advertising your new address now, so that in a year or so when Yahoo pulls some new crap that pisses you off, you have the option of leaving them without any of your friends noticing. I also recommend setting up a bunch of IM accounts, then using an ad-free all-in-one IM client like Miranda IM and move away from email in general.

Looks like this problem is fixed in gaim 2.0 beta4, although I haven't test it out yet since I didn't notice until now. I too upgraded gimp to an "unstable" version awhile back to get new features, and installed gtk 2.8 along with it. All the sudden gaim stopped working, found out it was a gaim/gtk bug, so bye-bye gaim, hello miranda-im.

With that being said, I'll probably have to go back and try out gaim2.0 beta 4 now.

When you have Miranda, who needs anything else?

For Windows, the best multi-protocol client is miranda. Not free (except beer-free and ad-free) but not evil either, and much nicer than trillian and gaim, and with a very active community of plugin developers for IM and widgets. Version 0.5 is announced to be released soon.

Or on windows, you could try Miranda
http://www.miranda-im.org/

Seems no one is giving serious answers so i guess i will be the only one

Freeware or open source software:
01. Firefox, http://www.getfirefox.com/
02. Winamp, http://www.winamp.com/
03. Miranda, http://www.miranda-im.org/
04. Media Player Classic, http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli
05. ffdshow, http://www.free-codecs.com/download/FFDShow.htm
06. CDBurnerXp Pro, http://www.cdburnerxp.se/
07. Daemon-tools, http://www.daemon-tools.cc/
08. uTorrent, http://www.utorrent.com/
09. XnView, http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enhome.htm l
10. ExactAudioCopy, http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
11. Dev-C++, http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html
12. 7-zip, http://www.7-zip.org/
13. Real Alternative, http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternati ve.htm
14. QuickTime Alternative, http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alte rnative.htm
15. Process Explorer, http://www.sysinternals.com/utilities/processexplo rer.html
16. Uniform Server, http://www.uniformserver.com/
17. nLite, http://www.nliteos.com/ (sp+hotfix+driver slipstreaming and ability to remove almost anything from the windows installation disc, including wmp, ie, drivers, services, etc, you can get your windows install disc down to 180MB with a 70MB RAM footprint after boot).

Commercial/Shareware software.
01. NOD32, http://www.nod32.com/ - simply the best antivirus software out there
02. Cinema4D, http://www.maxoncomputer.com/ Great modelling/rendering program (also available for OS X)
03. mIRC, http://www.mirc.com/ not the best irc client, but it has a tiny memory footprint/feature ratio
04. Directory Opus, http://www.gpsoft.com.au/ replace Explorer with a far better file manager.
05. UltraEdit, http://www.ultraedit.com/ great editor for many textbased formats
06. Visual Studio, http://microsoft.com/
07. Nero Burning ROM. http://www.ahead.de/ my burning program of choice

Luckily, like many previous Mozilla versions, it also comes with the "Modern" theme, which is easily selected.
This of course goes well with the Modern icon pack. Firefox has "always" had big memory leaks, as far as I've noticed, and Firefox has always had the "bug" where the page rendering is coupled to the entire UI. Firefox is unusable when it takes a half-second or more to switch between a 'relatively' large (cough, 20) number of tabs, and can take thirty seconds or more to load a plugin like Shockwave or Java, even on a fast machine. Then there are all of the security issues with Firefox, like that they're more or less supporting spyware tracking, nevermind the issue where it ignores most Java security; it's the only browser I've seen anymore which actually gets affected by Java Viruses, even Internet Explorer (6 SP2 or better) won't. They also tend to have a policy of inserting code which may not be stable, and may not be in the best interest of...anyone.

Also, it's not incompatible with particularly useful extensions. Even ForecastFox and Reminderfox work, as do EnigMail nightlies, Adblock (and Adblock Plus with automatic filter update extensions), Googlebar, StumbleUpon, even the web developer toolbar, and various tab browsing functionality can be replicated with Nightly builds of Multizilla. The only thing I can't easily replicate on SeaMonkey is GreaseMonkey (ironically). Ancient versions depend on Mozilla 1.7 or so, newer versions want Firefox 1.5, though I'm told there'll be a Seamonkey-compatible sometime soon.

And while Firefox may have originally been meant to "trim the fat" of Mozilla, the per-tab usage of SM vs. Firefox isn't a substantial difference (about 30MB difference on 100 tabs, which at that point is a drop in the bucket), and Mozilla/SeaMonkey also include the email client (which only adds about 4MB, compared to 40+ for Thunderbird, and 60+ or so for Outlook 2003), and can rack up more savings the more you use it to replace other things, like IRC client and Calendar (which now has a working version for Seamonkey). It also tends to render pages faster, with less CPU time, and less CPU time used for 'idle pages'. I can't count the number of times I've had to kill Firefox and restart it because some random tab or another started using 100% CPU time, even when it wasn't the active one. Animated GIFs also made the browser crazy (though I was getting that as late as December or so, before Firefox was finally purged permanently from my machine). Between SeaMonkey and Miranda, I save about 150MB of memory and a lot more CPU power compared to using other (standard) possible combinations of applications.

And Miranda IM.

For a tiny chat client on Win32, Miranda is brilliant.

You should get a new girlfriend named Miranda, http://www.miranda-im.org/

There are a lot more applications that work from a USB key that don't advertise that fact. I will share with you what I currently use on my 1gb USB key and the locations you can download them. Most of these are freeware or relatively cheap shareware. Please help the authors continue their work if you use any of these and make a small donation at their sites if available.

Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
This one will run from your key, but it does write to the registry which portable apps should not do. Then again, they don't advertise this as a portable app. Once you use it on a machine and configure it, it will remember your settings on that machine of course. Handy if you are locked down at work from installing software but you need it occasionally.

Bulk Rename Utility - http://www.jimwillsher.co.uk/Site/Software/Softwar e_Intro.php
a utility which allows the rapid renaming of files and folders, based upon flexible selection criteria. Download the zip version for portability.

FeedReader - http://www.feedreader.com/
This project is currently dead, but it works from USB wonderfully.

FoxitReader - http://www.foxitsoftware.com/bbs/index.php
A PDF reader that works very quickly (kind of like Adobe used to about 6 years ago).

Miranda - http://www.miranda-im.org/
A powerful and flexible multiprotocol IM client with loads of plugins. Download the zip version for portability.

mIRC - http://www.mirc.com/
Everyones favorite IRC app. Has always been portable.

PortableFileZilla - http://portableapps.com/
Portable FileZilla is the popular FileZilla FTP client packaged as a portable app, so you can take your server list and settings with you.

PortableFirefox - http://portableapps.com/
Portable Firefox is the popular Mozilla Firefox web browser packaged as a portable app, so you can take your bookmarks, extensions and saved passwords with you.

PortableNVU - http://portableapps.com/
Portable NVU is the easy-to-use NVU web editor packaged as a portable app, so you can edit your website on the go.

PortableOpenOffice - http://portableapps.com/
Portable OpenOffice.org is the popular OpenOffice.org office suite -- including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database -- packaged as a portable app

PortableSunbird - http://portableapps.com/
Portable Sunbird is the handy Mozilla Sunbird calendar and task manager packaged as a portable app, so you can take your calendar and to do list with you.

PortableThunderbird - http://portableapps.com/
Portable Thunderbird is the popular Mozilla Thunderbird email client packaged as a portable app, so you can take your email, address book and account settings with you.

Snippy - http://www.bhelpuri.net/Snippy/
Snippy is a small utility that captures an area of your screen to your clipboard to paste into other applications.

AleJenJes Countdown Timer - http://www.gonebowlin.com/freeware.html
It is a simple countdown timer where you enter the starting time in hours, minutes & seconds and it counts down to zero. Not needed often, but handy as can be for those few instances you do need one.

Unit Conversion Utility - http://www.jimwillsher.co.uk/Site/Software/UCU_Int ro.html
Unit Conversion U

I use miranda http://www.miranda-im.org/ pretty feature rich and full of plugins, seems to cover just about every msn feature that myself or most of my friends use.

the *only* thing that still makes me rather windows over linux for the desktop (and it's not games)

i like to see a flashing/message icon. and press a global shortcut key when i want to read it. thanks to that only feature, i'm still on windows + http://miranda-im.org/

with gaim, you have two options:
1) have the message popup on your screen spontaneously, even with manager reading code on you screen
2) use the... *ugh*... mouse... *ugh*... to double click gaim's icon

Miranda tries but has its own funky grey look.

Huh? Is this screenshot representative of the current default theme of Miranda? What's funky about it? If that isn't the standard Windows look and feel then I don't know what is. What do you expect, Windows buttons for every contact? A combo box? It's hard to know what the standard widget would be because it's just not a standard application. But vanilla Miranda is certainly plain enough to qualify as a Windows look and feel application IMO.

Try Miranda IM for Windows, it's a great little free resource light and open source client with a simple dll drop in folder for protocols and other plugins, of which there are plenty.

There are plugins for MSN, Jabber, ICQ, IRC (which is actually reasonably well done IMO), Yahoo, AIM, Gadu-Gadu and Skype (it's just an API wrapper, so you need the official client installed still). It comes with some of these by default, but you can simply unload and delete the dll's of the protocols you don't use.

It makes GAIM look like bloatware. I'm still looking for a *nix equivalent :(

Try Miranda IM for Windows, it's a great little free resource light and open source client with a simple dll drop in folder for protocols and other plugins, of which there are plenty.

There are plugins for MSN, Jabber, ICQ, IRC (which is actually reasonably well done IMO), Yahoo, AIM, Gadu-Gadu and Skype (it's just an API wrapper, so you need the official client installed still). It comes with some of these by default, but you can simply unload and delete the dll's of the protocols you don't use.

It makes GAIM look like bloatware. I'm still looking for a *nix equivalent :(

Why has no one mentioned Miranda? It's a great piece of software with which has support for lots of protocols. Check it out!

Miranda IM http://miranda-im.org/ does everything and more. There is about 500 plugins and well documented API if You need something very uncommon.

Have you tried Miranda? Much like Trillian, but has a huge amount of plugins etc so you can customise it to your hearts content, very lightweight, generally IMHO wins slightly over Trillian.

Miranda is one app that keeps me on Windows... and it keeps reminding my why all other clients suck. Every now or then I'll try GAIM, but I actually prefer CenterICQ....

Miranda is small, modular, has simple & coherent interface (looks like a native application, not some sort of freakish eXXXTreeeme-Teeenage-Mega-Skinzz-application), protocols galore, etc.

For my PC i use Miranda - http://www.miranda-im.org/
For my Mac i use Adiumx - http://www.adiumx.com/

Both cover the 3 networks i'm registered with (plus more), ICQ / Jabber (via GoogleTalk) / MSN. But i don't use anything bar the chat and file sending functionality. If i want to voice chat to somebody, i use my cell phone. Or if i'm really feeling lazy, then Skype...

The common goodness with these two, they're super simple, and they just work. I use the base install for both, that's the minimum amount of functionality. You can extend both with plugins, but who really needs all that bloat. AdiumX has tabbed chatting (that can group chats at a protocol level), and growl support, which is very pretty :)

I've tried a bunch of other clients, but they all come with too many bells and whistles. As mentioned, all i want to do is chat. That's it. And thats what IM is about, instant messaging. If you need any other functionality, like voice or whatever, then use the phone or send an email...

It's lightweight, sleek and easy to use. No bloat, no nag and no fee.

Miranda supports ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, Jabber, Gadu-gadu and IRC.

Oh, and it's published under the GPL.

http://www.miranda-im.org/

Miranda is another that's a lot like GAIM and TRILLIAN but is much more basic and smooth running in my opinion. Works with all major clients as well and is a very small install.

Personally, I use Kopete under Linux, but I recommend Miranda IM to every Windows user out there. Miranda has a plethora of plugins for everything from IM protocols to a very useful boss key, including message encryption and voice support.

Does this affect the Miranda client?

Or Miranda if you want something less bloated than Trillian, and open source (still Windows only).

miranda

If you're on Windows, Miranda is ever better than Trillian or Gaim.

IM has been virtually free of direct spam attacks

Good for you, but I offer a different anecdote: with the official ICQLite client I would get maybe half a dozen spams every day. I turned off accepting messages from strangers, but ICQ doesn't allow turning off requests to be added to your contact list, so I kept getting half-a-dozen contact list requests from spammers every day.

This was another reason to install Miranda, besides the multi-protocol support and very light footprint.

MSN Messenger isn't an open protocol either (The recent matter of MS opening up some API's for it and some other of their goodies is good, but doesn't count). This hasn't stopped FOSS implementations of the protocol based on reverse engineering.

At the moment Skype is a good product with a geek (& Joe Noob) friendly image so there's no incentive to want to create an alternative client. Should Skype drop a platform though, i'm sure atleast some of this enthusiasm for the service would be sucked into open source.

Even if Skype itself were to fail on platform X and noone was to create openSkype it should have generated enough buzz over VoIP by now to get open source to start picking up the slack.

Don't like gaim under windows? Try Miranda-IM. It ain't perfect, but it is fast, minimal and extendable (tip of the week: tabbed message windows). Like Gaim better though, it just works.

I just add a bit on that list from top of my head.
Although I think the listed app goes beyond what the so called 'average pc user' wants, but there goes...

1. Konqueror ( http://www.konqueror.org/ )

2. Email - Sylpheed ( http://sylpheed.good-day.net/ )

3. I think Evolution is more like in this place.

4. Lately "Sound Juicer" is taking more attention too

5. VideoLAN aka VLC ( http://www.videolan.org/ ) and Ogle ( http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/ ) [and Goggles ( http://www.fifthplanet.net/goggles.html ) for Ogle GUI wrapper] for DVD watching.

6. There are plenty way to do this, but the typical ones could be 'Jinzora' ( http://www.jinzora.org/ ) and 'MusicPD' ( http://www.mpd.org/ ), even plain Apache does it fine too, in a way.

8. If you want easier to manage iptables wrapper, Shorewall ( http://www.shorewall.net/ ) and there are other wrappers too.

9. KOffice ( http://www.koffice.org/ ) and by individual components, Abiword ( http://www.abisource.com/ ), Gnumeric ( http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/ ), Gnucash ( http://www.gnucash.org/ )

10. Inkscape ( http://www.inkscape.org/ ) or Sodipodi ( http://www.sodipodi.com/ ) for vector graphics.

11. Miranda ( http://miranda-im.org/ ). Windows only.

13. Hmm , Samba? ( http://www.samba.org/ ), WedDAV (Look parent post), FTP (plenty ftp daemons, ex : http://www.proftpd.org/, http://vsftpd.beasts.org/ etc)

16. GPhoto ( http://www.gphoto.org/ ), EOG ( http://www.gnome.org/ ? ), GQView ( http://gqview.sourceforge.net/ ). The latters are for just viewing mainly.

20. FreeNX ( http://www.nomachine.com/ , http://freenx.berlios.de/ ) http://www.poptop.org/ ), L2TPd ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/l2tpd ), RP-L2TPd ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/rp-l2tp/ )

24. Postfix ( http://www.postfix.org/ ), Sendmail ( http://www.sendmail.org/ ), Exim ( http://www.exim.org/ ), Cyrus ( http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/imapd/ ), Xmail ( http://www.xmailserver.org/ ), qmail ( http://www.qmail.org/ )

25. Spamassassin ( http://spamassassin.apache.org/ )

26. Same as above.

27. XSane ( http://www.xsane.org/ ) for sane frontends.

30. Buzzmachines ( http://www.buzzmachines.com/ ) I could be wrong...

31. 'various GUI frontends' - X CD Roast ( http://www.xcdroast.org/ ), K3B ( http://k3b.sourceforge.net/ )

32. Don't know any opensource ones...

There's another nice jabber client for windows available here http://www.miranda-im.org/.

It supports AIM, ICQ, Jabber, IRC, MSN and maybe some others.

Free Software and cross-platform > proprietary and Windows-only

Miranda (http://www.miranda-im.org/) is still free (GPL, $0), but I like the native Windows interface. Future versions may be cross-platform. Its plugin system is virtually limitless.

It also used the open TOC protocol (with fewer features) for AIM rather than the reverse-engineered OSCAR, which up until recently seemed to have fewer problems. Just recently AOL seems to have changed something, so some users are getting a TOC2 plugin working. The basic stuff is working, and the author is quickly adding more to it.