What Makes a Good IM Client?

thesaint05 asks: "So I was sitting here at my job where and IM is a pretty integral part of communicating intra-office. However, I have 3 different clients installed, and each has a different user base. Within the office we have an SIP server and use Windows Messenger. The Google Talk client is for colleagues and friends on the cutting edge, and AIM is used by pretty much everybody else (including a bunch of clients). So, after holding 3 different conversations simultaneously on all 3 clients (Windows Messenger with a colleague, AIM with my girlfriend, and Google Talk with a friend at a different tech company) I got to wondering, what are the strengths and weaknesses of all of these clients? Which do you use and why? If you could combine features from all of the IM clients out there, what would they be?"

Comments

Re:lol

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I'd rather everyone have a numeric id, but not sequential. Unique id should be the hash of your public key, which is then used for verification/encryption.
You then do the rest icq style. I still don't remember my uncles icq uin, nor do I know his aim screenname, but I know if I type his name in the Find User dialog, I'd find his icq account. Long aim screennames are no easier considering aols db is merged with netscape/compuserve/a few other services by now. The number of unused old accounts wasting space is astonishing. I couldn't even register my full name as a screenname because it was already in use.

Unique numeric ids keep people from fighting over that stuff, and rarely have to actually be displayed, you just display the nick they set as the displayname. Then only show the numeric id in case of duplicate names when trying to find people. Even then you dont have to show the full digits, you can use graphical representation of the key. Forgot the name of the tech, but it looked promising when used for PKI.