I've been recently on a journey to find a new instant messaging client because, sadly, I've been using regular 'ol basic AIM, which has these really cool ads that expand when your mouse accidentally rolls over them. I always have backup clients, and I've had a bit of a history with Pidgin, which was my main client for years. Pidgin has a lot of good things about it; mainly the ability to message just about anyone because of the amount of supported IM services, while being extremely lightweight. At the same time, however, the plugins are occasionally a bit of a hassle to use and there doesn't seem to be much room for customization because skins are nearly impossible to come by.
I just downloaded and installed Digsby. The guys over there have, what can only be described as, the complete opposite design philosophy of Pidgin. This program is big and bulky, but it can integrate your e-mail accounts and your social networks. I don't know if supporting people's crack-like addiction to checking their social networks is a good thing, but it does it well. As an actual instant messaging service, it'll do the trick just fine, while being fairly aesthetically pleasing and customizable. For example, I get to look at my buddy list with white text on a black background. I then removed the buddy icons that are displayed next to my buddy's names and lowered the spacing so I can fit everyone on screen at once. Although Digsby has seemed to work well so far, be advised that if you choose to download it, go over everything before you just click next, next, next on the installer. If you don't uncheck those boxes, Digsby will install several toolbars and use your spare CPU cycles when you're idle. Stuff like this really, really pisses me off, but the software works well nevertheless.
I'd avoid stuff like basic AIM or Trillian.
3 comments:
I use an old adblocking thingamajig on basic aim so I don't get the ads, but I still hate the program(and now that there's a new version, I have to manually crash some processes every time I lose connection or start up the program to silence their update messages that keep popping up).
What have you got against trillian?
I haven't used Trillian in a while, but they hadn't updated it since the last time Matt Serra fought. I would rather use something like Pidgin over Trillian because I feel like they perform just about the same functions, but Pidgin is a bit more lightweight. I wasn't a big fan of the menus and aesthetics either. I guess I get a little picky with that stuff. For me, it's either a really stripped down client or something that can do everything (like Digsby). I tend to find that those in the middle are just bulkier without much more necessary functionality.
On a related note, I've found that Digsby has allowed me to refrain from randomly and constantly clicking my e-mail and social network bookmarks to check for updates. It was an annoying habit and I'm glad to be getting away from it.
I too have had connection issues with the basic AIM program which has caused me to occasionally switch back to Pidgin. I don't know why I ever bothered using it again in the first place.
Trillian astra is the new version of trillian, which might even still be in beta. It's pretty new. I never found trillian to be heavy on the CPU or memory.
Use a gmail notifier in firefox and you won't have to obsess over shit. F@cb0k should be emailing you any updates you care about unless you're checking everyone's shit like an idiot.
All that said, I think I may be officially switching over to ahoihoi. And I might give trillian astra a try again. Ahoihoi is looking like it's in my future right now though.
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