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Six Multi-Service IM Clients Reviewed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the trillian-for-the-win dept.

mikemuch writes "It's been a while since AOL stopped trying to jam third-party IM clients, and their use is now a fairly common desktop experience. ExtremeTech has posted a roundup of free alternatives to the standard IM software from the big boys — AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN (now Windows Live) Messenger. The products are a mixed bag, some of them Web 2.0-based, like the excellent meebo and the ad-heavy eBuddy. Most give you combined message windows with tabs. GAIM is now Pidgin, Meetro tries to get you chatting with locals, and Trillian, now at version 3.1, remains the client to beat."

4 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. There's no great client. by Poromenos1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I am quite disappointed by the choice of clients. MSN's client is bloated and I've asked them to add an option to STOP THOSE STUPID WINDOWS FROM BLINKING when you get a message when it was back in version 4. It's something like 11 now, and I have yet to see that little option.

    Miranda IM is small and fast, but lacks in features and it has this annoying thing where the send control is disabled for a while after you send a message.

    Trillian is the best of all but still has many bugs (slow, can't disable video/audio plugins which I never use, it doesn't update MSN names, it doesn't use upnp or let you forward ports yourself, etc etc).

    Pidgin is rather nice but it lacks many features as well (ctrl+tabbing through windows never worked for me, pressing escape doesn't close the window, it constantly gets moved to the second screen, is rather slowish, etc).

    It's too bad that with this many clients there isn't a great one. Trillian comes close, but it does need a bit of improvement still.

    --
    Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
  2. Interesting... by helmutvs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Any one else notice that the only product that got their little "ExtremeTech Approved" logo was Trillian Pro, which costs 25 dollars? An interesting choice for a list of Free clients.

    --
    There are no uninteresting things. There are only uninterested people.
  3. Re:Miranda? by arashi+no+garou · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Agreed. My favorite thing about Miranda is that it runs very well from a USB thumb drive. Put it with PortableFirefox, PortableThunderbird and a few other flash-friendly apps and you can take your entire internet desktop with you.

  4. Re:Pigdin and the windows version by SeaFox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Anyone else notice that they stated that there wasn't a windows version of Pidgin?


    I noticed it. But they did remember to mention that the Mac installation was "complicated".
    I also saw them mention that the Yahoo mail checking didn't work. Hmmm, works fine for me.