Digital Nightfall on 13/5/2011 at 08:08
I've been a Trillian user for a long time. I started with Trillian 3 I believe. I even purchased the pro version of Trillian 4 because I wanted the extra features, and to support what I considered to be a quality product that I had been using every day for years.
When Trillian 5 Beta came out, it did everything right. It cut out a ton of fat. The interface was minimalistic and done in the Windows 7 style. I had been waiting for the release of the pro version.
Well, the Pro version is now available, but aside from cloud support of chat logs (something I do not want, and seems like a horrible idea) it offers no new features. Instead, they enabled ads in the free version. Ads that appear in-line within your chats. This double whammy of bad ideas is a poor incentive to buy the Pro version. It's more of an invitation to try out different software options, I think.
What's good these days in the realm of all-in-one messenger programs? Is there anything out there that has robust support for Skype, google talk, facebook chat, and IRC? (In addition to MSN/ICQ/AIM/YM of course.)
Zerker on 14/5/2011 at 11:06
Well, there's (
http://pidgin.im/) Pidgin. That handles a fair bit, but some bells and whistles get lost in the shuffle for some services (like voice chat and file transfers). Services unsupported by the main application usually have plugins.
On Linux there's also (
http://live.gnome.org/Empathy) Empathy, but that hasn't been ported to Windows yet.
Nameless Voice on 14/5/2011 at 18:28
I've been using Pidgin for years
It doesn't support Skype, though, apart from through a ridiculous plugin that actually runs Skype in the background, complete with its usual massive memory footprint - completely defeating the point.
I only use it for MSN and Google Talk, though. Its IRC is poor compared to a dedicated client like mIRC.
It does appear to have plugins for odd message protocols like Facebook IM, though I haven't tried them as I don't use Facebook.
redface on 14/5/2011 at 18:43
Using Pidgin as well, for msn/icq/irc. It's good enough.
june gloom on 14/5/2011 at 23:25
This is why I rarely update many of my programs. I used AIM 5.2 something or other for years until I switched to a new computer. I'm using whatever version of Trillian was current in September last year and haven't updated since. And I'm still using Winamp 2.95.
New Horizon on 15/5/2011 at 02:20
I dumped Trillian years ago myself and have been using Pidgin faithfully ever since. If all you want to have is a messenger program, then pidgin will get the job done for you. As an added bonus, it's open source and it's free.
