Dear Lazyweb (inspired by yakko)

[feren]

Dear Lazyweb,

I read yakko's rant about IM clients and decided that I was curious enough to make a poll about this very topic, to see what you use. This is especially interesting to me as I've been working these last few weeks to organize my IM contact list.

Edit 1430: I had a poll here, but the goddamn poll builder shit itself and died a horrible death. I'll come back to this.

I'm also curious -- if you use a "hybrid" or "multi-client" IM program, what do you use? On the Windows side I used to be a pretty big fan of Trillian but it's become insanely bloated. No IM client should take two minutes to start on an AMD64 machine with two gigs of ram! Insult to injury is that since the new version came out I would have to re-register if I want to use any of the features I'm actually interested. This has generally forced me to use Gaim as it's relatively cross-client and lightweight.

On the OSX side I use the super-sexy Adium for my MacBook. It is lightweight and fast, highly configurable, talks to damn near any IM platform you can think of (even client protocols I didn't know existed) and integrates with other parts of my OSX environment like the built-in address book.

Comments

[fiskblack.livejournal.com]

I get along just fine with AIM Ad-Hack.

[urocyon.livejournal.com]

Interesting that you're "forced to use" GAIM, but adium is "super sexy." In any case, libgaim for me under all platforms. Sometimes gmail's embedded client, but it's rare I catch anyone there.

[feren.livejournal.com]

Interesting that you're "forced to use" GAIM, but adium is "super sexy."

Gaim on Windows¹ looks and generally acts like an OpenLook app from 1993. I'm sure some of the behaviors can be tweaked by loading custom skins and some plugins but that's more effort than I'm willing to put into an IM client. My penultimate concern was cross-platform connectivity and light weight, which it delivers, so I'm cool with the GUI drawbacks -- but they are drawbacks, and due to them Gaim was "second chair" in my mind to Trillian until Trillian became even less usable with each progressive release.

Perhaps my complaints with Gaim's usability are only incurred because stuff like that is what happens when you port an *IX app into Windows. Or when you subject GTK+ to Windows. I am personally disinclined to believe either since evidence exists (XChat for Windows) that GTK apps ported from *IX to Windows can indeed look and act nice.

Adium, also released under GNU license, looks and acts like a modern piece of software. It brings a crisp UI and predictable behavior that follows the platform it's built for. This could be because it's only being developed for a single platform and thus is free from constraints cross-platform clients are forced to labor under.

So yes, I find Adium "super-sexy" on OS X and Gaim is something I'm "forced to use" until I can find a better multi-protocol IM client for Windows.

I'm constantly on Google, but I don't seem to have your e-mail address so I don't see ya when you pop by!

[1] I am using 1.5.0 as it is a "stable" release. Maybe the 2.0 betas they'e constantly pushing out would resolve a bulk of my complaints, but beta is "unstable" and "unstable" is no use to me either.

[silverwind.livejournal.com]

I used to consider Trillium nifty, until it made EVERYTHING unusable for me. :(

At some point, a new build decided to ruin all my lists. We'd had a roomate who used this computer before, to no real ill effect - then to re-input his stuff, instead of keeping things seperate (which it had done) it merged Everything. (We *did* put it under another user, and all that crap, so who knows.)

I got seriously fucking sick of having random people I'd never known message me with the equivalent of "Who the fuck are you; Go away; I don't know you, you stalker" and suchlike. :P
I also got tired of trying to explain to random shmucks why I'd come up on their aim-msn-whatever. :P


So now I don't use anything. :(

[points.livejournal.com]

Trillian on Windows, GAIM on Linux, Fire for OSX.