Alternative to AIM

[Quixfire]

Me wife has made a few friends playing WoW and they asked her to use AIM to communicate outside of the game. I am not a big fan if IM or chat programs to begin with and I haven't ever felt comfortable with AOL products. Is there another program outside of AIM that I can use with their service?

 

[jdjuice]

gaim is a pretty good program, you can simultaneously get on the AIM network, yahoo, msn, and a couple others. Find it at sourceforge.net.

 

[vrbaba]

DeadAIM.... the best alternative out there

 

[CarLBanks]

Trillian is a great program.

 

[Bulldog13]

miranda im

 

[rh71]

Originally posted by: CarLBanks
Trillian is a great program.

it is. It's the ultimate all-in-one. In addition to messaging for all mediums, I use it for stocks, weather, RSS news, and email (POP) reporting. All this in a window that's easily callable with a single click. And it's all auto-refreshed...

 

[n0cmonkey]

Can't get anything better than gaim.

 

[StevenYoo]

does gaim work well with AIM file xfers or direct IM connecT?

 

[SleepWalkerX]

i love trillian. it has so many plugins. i love rendevous, spell checker, the rss agreggator plugin, buddy pounce, performance stats, gmail email plugin, message splitter, and even the cs server stats plugin is sweet.

 

[cKGunslinger]

Trillian or Gaim.

I use the former at home and the latter at work. Trillian is a bit more customizable and Gaim is a bit more simplistic.

 

[duragezic]

Miranda > *

Ok, well I guess Trillian has it beat with all those things, but I like Miranda for its very simple IM usage.

Gaim? Makes me sick... I hate that it comes with linux installs and it's the only one to use at the uni's computers. For one thing, it doesn't seem like you can go away but still stay at the computer, unless you want to keep that little window up? It also shows people offline that are really online. Granted my Miranda has a bunch of plugins, but it has WAY more functionality than that damn thing.

 

[Schadenfroh]

The freeware, opensource, Miranda

1. Works with all the major IM networks
2. No bloat and uses the least resources of any IM
3. Tons of plugins and addons for you to download
4. Streamlined interface that is simple, pratical, and productive

One of the many great opensource programs from the sourceforge community.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: StevenYoo
does gaim work well with AIM file xfers or direct IM connecT?

Inconsequential. Er, I mean look it up.

 

[Blayze]

gaim or trillian

 

[tfinch2]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Can't get anything better than gaim.

 

[cKGunslinger]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
The freeware, opensource, Miranda

1. Works with all the major IM networks
2. No bloat and uses the least resources of any IM
3. Tons of plugins and addons for you to download
4. Streamlined interface that is simple, pratical, and productive

One of the many great opensource programs from the sourceforge community.

Hey, I just downloaded tried Miranda and so far, I like it better over Gaim here at work. But I have a few questions that maybe you or another Miranda user can help with.

1) All the icon sets I download look nothing like the previews. They all appear to be low-color/low-res and have a square around them. My desktop is in high-color and I'm running Win2K. Am I missing some setting? Is WinXP required? EDIT: Oh wait, I think I'm forgetting that Wink2K doesn't have an icon alpha channel, correct?

2) I like being able to hover over a contact and see their status (how long they've been idle, away msg, etc.) I can't seem to do this with Miranda.

3) Can I get "/me does something" to actually translate?

Any "must have" plugins that make it more like gaim/trillian?

Thanks.

 

[AFB]

Originally posted by: rh71

Originally posted by: CarLBanks
Trillian is a great program.

it is. It's the ultimate all-in-one. In addition to messaging for all mediums, I use it for stocks, weather, RSS news, and email (POP) reporting. All this in a window that's easily callable with a single click. And it's all auto-refreshed...

 

[Pepsei]

another vote for trillian, matching cheating spouses since July 1st, 2000.

 

[Rottie]

Trillian Pro get my vote cause it allows me open 5 aol accounts at same time.

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Can't get anything better than gaim.

 

[13rian]

Trillian Pro is what I use (for ~2 years).

I really only use it for AIM and hasn't been much of a resource hog for me. The only plugins I use are Jabber, to indicate when your buddy is typing, and Splitter, allows long messages, incl. copy+pasting, to be sent all at once.

 

[Quixfire]

I choose Miranda IM because it's easy to use and doesn't have alot of other features. My wife gets confused real easy when it comes to computer programs.