Instant Messenger Clients...???

[movieman]

I have never used an Instant Messenger client and am really leary of anything AOL - Especially what I read about the new version of AIM in some forums...

What are the advantages of either GAIM or TRILLIAN ?

Is there anything I speciffically should know when installing, like what features to not install, disable Norton, etc. ?

I am running XP PRO and Norton Internet Security and AntiVirus, SpyBot, and AdAware....

Any help would be appreciated!

THANKS!!!

Richard

 

[crazycarl]

the main advantages of gaim and other im clients is that they use less memory. also you dont have to deal with obnoxious advertisting from AOL or anything like that. as far as gaim, installing that the default install should be just fine. idk about trillian though.

 

[Schadenfroh]

consider the freeware opensource, miranda

it uses the least sytem resources of any other IM, it can be ran off of a memory stick or cd. it supports all the networks, ICQ, MSN, AOL, IRC, Yahoo, etc. Has no nagware or bloatware at all.

Miranda IM is a multi protocol instant messenger client.No bloat, it's Easy and Small! Miranda IM is designed to be resource efficient and easy to use. It uses very little memory and requires no installation. Just unzip and run! This also makes it ideal for users that want to run their messenger client from a removable storage such as an USB memory stick. It can even be stored on a floppy disc if not too many plugins are used.
It's all about plugins!The powerful plugin system makes Miranda IM extremely flexible. Only the most basic features are built in, but there are currently more than 200 plugins available for download that allows users to extend the functionality in Miranda IM. Plugins can be installed to add support for ICQ, AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, Gadu-Gadu, Tlen, Netsend and other protocols.

Miranda IM is published under the GPL license and is free of charge.

Miranda IM supports Windows NT4, 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP & 2003.

 

[movieman]

hmmmm - haven't heard of Miranda - I'll give it a look too --- THANKS!

 

[duragezic]

Yeah Miranda friggin' rocks. I can't comment on how it works with the other protocols though since I only use ICQ.

 

[movieman]

For now, I will be wanting to connect to AIM...

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: movieman
For now, I will be wanting to connect to AIM...

miranda has a AIM protocol, should work just fine.

 

[43st]

I used Miranda for about a year, mostly for ICQ with friends and squadron mates. Miranda is nice and has some neat add-ons but it has one killer problem. It losses sync with the ICQ servers all the time! 1 in 20 message sends either hangs or fails, it's a real nightmare, and pretty much a show stopper.

I've moved on to GAIM and it's much better today than it was one year ago. You don't get as many neat add-ons but at least it works consistantly. My only issue with GAIM is that I can't tell when my MSN friends are online.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Look at Jabber (Open Source)

 

[movieman]

Thanks for all the info here!

 

[ArmchairAthlete]

deadAIM is awesome. AIM without the BS, and with a few handy features like tabbed chatting.

 

[madthumbs]

I've been hooked on trillian pro for a while now. Miranda seems to be popular here though. Does it support plugins like birthday calendar, weather, pop3 mail checker, etc? I actually have no problems with Trillian at all, is there any advantages to Miranda?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: madthumbs
I actually have no problems with Trillian at all, is there any advantages to Miranda?

freeware, opensource, least system resources used of any IM, no bloat, no ads.

 

[Rottie]

Trillian Pro 2.0 which you have to pay for and it was cool IM but it has some problem with Yahoo sometimes and on my old laptop I use Gaim because it uses less memory than Trillian free version. I did not like Miranda at all.

 

[skace]

I love trillian pro (which I bought a long time ago). It has one major con in that I always seem to have problems sending/recieving stuff. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

 

[The Green Bean]

Trillian Pro > *

 

[SeTeS]

I've been using Miranda for quite a while now and am happy w/ it. You can tweak it to your hearts content, BUT, don't expect fancy shiznit like video conf and such.. yet. Plus, it's super light on resources.

 

[kcbass]

I saw this thread and thought i'd try gaim. It looks pretty good so far, but i'm having trouble logging on to yahoo through it. I want to be logged into AOL and yahoo at the same time, but when i try to logon to yahoo, it gives me a disconnect message. Can gaim be used for two client services simultaneously?

 

[KoolDrew]

I tried Miranda and it work very well. Ia heva slo used GAIM and trillain and I really hated trillian but GAIM was nice

 

[Zugzwang152]

used trillian 0.7x for a while, am now using Gaim 1.0.2. It's okay, i would switch back to the free trillian, but i'm too lazy...

 

[igowerf]

Is there a free AIM chat client for Pocket PC?

 

[konakona]

i am currently using miranda. while gaim looked nice, something was fubar'd with 2byte language support (i might have messed it up but oh well...) and took up more memory. never liked trillian tho, miranda is way better in my book.

 

[kcbass]

Does anyone have an answer for my previous post in this thread? I'd like to stop running both AIM and yahoo messenger, but I can only do that if I get GAIM to work on both clients at once.

 

[mattg1981]

I use miranda

 

[kcbass]

i noticed miranda doesn't work with yahoo, and when I tried to run it, i got a weird runtime error, so I uninstalled it