Best Instant Messenger

[Phil]

can anyone tell me the best Instant messenger, i won't say why for fear of flaming.

 

[Ernest]

I use msn messenger myself, but ive used yahoo and AOL in the past too and they're all pretty good.

 

[oxygene]

jabber - extensible (new features being added all the time by various people), open standard and consortium (so no "A - I don't want you to - O - participate on my network - L IM" behaviour), and server side transports to other protocols (icq, aim, msn, yahoo, gadugadu, ...), so only the admin of the server (of which many can exist) has to update the software to keep up with incompatibles changes of the competition.

lots of clients, too

http://www.jabber.org

 

[PinkSpider]

I use MSN as all my friends are on it :/

 

[trooper]

Yahoo.

Trooper

 

[EvilDragon]

You mean program or protocol?

Program:
I use Miranda (www.miranda-im.org)
Very flexible, small, configurable, no installer (means: Copy it where you want it, start it and it works), no registry-entries (everything handled via ini-files) and no spyware, installed system dlls or anything else

You can use it with every protocol there is at the same time

Protocols:
I use ICQ... but only because it was there first and I'm using it since years
I only have MSN because of one friend... don't like it though.

 

[Rico]

can anyone tell me the best Instant messenger, i won't say why for fear of flaming.

:lol:

Trillian is solid. Supports MSN, ICQ, YIM, AIM, IRC - all the protocols you might be on! And renaming contacts, skins, logging, auto-message-history, no annoying popups, groups and subgroups, complete customisation of sounds and messages, plugins, mail and news.... it's awesome.

 

[raven]

What he said.

I have friends on Yahoo, MSN, AIM and IRC and instead of installing four clients and running them at the same time I just use Trillian, it's great!

 

[Phil]

thanks now what is the easiest service to subscribe to.

is it msn, its not for me its for a friend

 

[generalnmx]

Trillian Pro here.

 

[trooper]

can anyone tell me the best Instant messenger, i won't say why for fear of flaming.

:lol:

Trillian is solid. Supports MSN, ICQ, YIM, AIM, IRC - all the protocols you might be on! And renaming contacts, skins, logging, auto-message-history, no annoying popups, groups and subgroups, complete customisation of sounds and messages, plugins, mail and news.... it's awesome.

But don`t you need to have all the other IM installed to be able to use them through trillian ?

Trooper

 

[raven]

can anyone tell me the best Instant messenger, i won't say why for fear of flaming.

:lol:

Trillian is solid. Supports MSN, ICQ, YIM, AIM, IRC - all the protocols you might be on! And renaming contacts, skins, logging, auto-message-history, no annoying popups, groups and subgroups, complete customisation of sounds and messages, plugins, mail and news.... it's awesome.

But don`t you need to have all the other IM installed to be able to use them through trillian ?

Trooper

No, you just need accounts.

 

[CrazyDesi]

I use GAIM usually. Its just like Trillian without as much overhaul.

I used to use trillian but its hard for my non computer fluent family to switch the screen names. Try GAIM though its just as good.

 

[bringoutthegimp]

msn messenger

 

[LHC]

MSN is a pretty terrible piece of bloatware, but I use it because all my friends use it and I tried using Trillian one time but it didn't work.

 

[Dozer]

I used miranda for a while, then went back to msn messenger as it's better with file sending/group convos/webcam etc.

I'd go for msn or trillian.

 

[Rico]

MSN is a pretty terrible piece of bloatware, but I use it because all my friends use it and I tried using Trillian one time but it didn't work.

Same here, it wouldn't show up any contacts, but I tried MSN Plus, then Miranda, now finally Trillian (2) again and it worked. It's the best of the lot, but I don't think it does MSN webcams or voice convos... at least without a plugin. Just switch to MSN for those.

 

[declaration]

MSN is a pretty terrible piece of bloatware, but I use it because all my friends use it and I tried using Trillian one time but it didn't work.

Same here, it wouldn't show up any contacts, but I tried MSN Plus, then Miranda, now finally Trillian (2) again and it worked. It's the best of the lot, but I don't think it does MSN webcams or voice convos... at least without a plugin. Just switch to MSN for those.

Thats the annoying thing about using Linux for me.

there are plenty of MSN clients around, but I frequently have voice conversations, and on Linux there is no way round this as far as I know.

 

[Dolfhin]

Trillian 2 Pro here, Same reasons as Rico but Trillian also gives you the option to hide those stupid MSN pictures. I also like the spellchecker on Trillian although I never use it it's a nice option to have (Gaim's Spellchecker works beter and I used it more).

And Opera for IRC it rocks on that

 

[Twimfy]

MSN, most of my mates aren't tech savvy so I just use what's easiest for their sake.