Best Instant Messenger

[Axeman]

MSn - tried both Trillian and GAIM, but both had probs with file transfers, so I gave up....

 

[GPJosh]

Trillian Pro 2 for me. EDIT: Yes, that's windows.

 

[Rico]

THAT'S windows!? Go and buy a Mac already, honestly, please If you prefer the Mac GUI for everything, won't you be happier with a real Mac? Regardless, I'm impressed.

 

[Tobriand]

Windows and.... Litestep? Or Windowblinds? Or just Plus?

Anyways, Trillian here, though I occasionally have to use that evil piece of software that the Beast manufactures and fills with, as has been mentioned Bloat. Pity Trillian only does webcam in Yahoo though. Else I could obliterate MSN from my HDD... but I can't, so tehre we go <sigh>

BTW: Does ICQ still do realtime chat where each keystroke gets sent or not? I haven't looked at the official client for a looong while, and Trillian certainly doesn;t support that...

 

[Rico]

That sounds cool; I found myself thinking about it a long time ago but didn't think any messenger app was bored enough to implement such a thing If anything, it kills off the old "'User is typing a message...' then nothing is sent" annoyance.

 

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

Miranda. Its small and it works.

 

[Tobriand]

That sounds cool; I found myself thinking about it a long time ago but didn't think any messenger app was bored enough to implement such a thing If anything, it kills off the old "'User is typing a message...' then nothing is sent" annoyance.

Yep. Certainly was - though I think it was a slightly different protocol; it was before they added a reply bit to the instant messaging section of the program. If you wanted to send a message, you had to right click and choose message. If you wanted to chat, you chose chat, and got a completely different interface where every character was sent... could be quite good . Its a pity it seems to have fallen out of use, since it was the main thing that ICQ had and others didn't - especially since ICQ doesn't have the whole "So and so is typing a message" thing built in... they just have the messages appear out of nowhere. Only real problem with it (apart from being able to rephrase things halfway through typing them) was the set of sounds that went with it - those of a very loud typewriter. And a trainwhistle if you hit CTRL-G... which could be *really* annoying lol.

Oh, and of course the whole being able to send messages when people are offline that arrive whether or not you're online when they next get on. Which can be useful and doesn't happen for others as well...

 

[EvilDragon]

The thing I don't like about Trillian:

When using ICQ, it doesn't check if the message arrives...
So if you have connection problems, you can't be sure it came through.

That's why I use Miranda (and because you can do a lot more with it )

 

[GPJosh]

THAT'S windows!? Go and buy a Mac already, honestly, please If you prefer the Mac GUI for everything, won't you be happier with a real Mac? Regardless, I'm impressed.

Mac's are out of my price range and I like windows compatibility, just not the GUI.

BTW, It's ObjectDock, Objectbar and StyleXP running, plus Wallpaper Master to cycle my backrounds like a real mac.

 

[Rico]

The thing I don't like about Trillian:

When using ICQ, it doesn't check if the message arrives...
So if you have connection problems, you can't be sure it came through.

That's why I use Miranda (and because you can do a lot more with it )

Hmm... mixed results here. 'Is typing a message' doesn't always work, sometimes I get messages 'instantly' but it seems to depend on who's on the other end, so it might be a protocol issue in newer versions.

Connection checking on MSN seems flawed whatever. Occasionally I have sent text and it never gets replied... then I paste it again to the person and it's the first time he's seen it. This happens whatever client I'm on - MSN doesn't seem to have notification. You'd think it would :/ if it was p2p it would, of course, due to ACK packets. But it's server based so there's two points of failure and no communication between them. Also fairly suspicious :/

 

[EvilDragon]

The thing I don't like about Trillian:
When using ICQ, it doesn't check if the message arrives...
So if you have connection problems, you can't be sure it came through.
That's why I use Miranda (and because you can do a lot more with it )

Hmm... mixed results here. 'Is typing a message' doesn't always work, sometimes I get messages 'instantly' but it seems to depend on who's on the other end, so it might be a protocol issue in newer versions.

Connection checking on MSN seems flawed whatever. Occasionally I have sent text and it never gets replied... then I paste it again to the person and it's the first time he's seen it. This happens whatever client I'm on - MSN doesn't seem to have notification. You'd think it would :/ if it was p2p it would, of course, due to ACK packets. But it's server based so there's two points of failure and no communication between them. Also fairly suspicious :/

Well, I mainly use ICQ and IRC and ICQCorp (that's an internal ICQ where you can setup a server in a company... real cool for business communication).

I never liked MSN, so I have no idea if any other clients work better