Trillian Alternatives for the Chatty
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I use almost all of the IM protocols around. To date, I have accounts with the following protocols: AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber (Gmail), and ICQ. Each has a different use:
AIM - Talk with friends from School
MSN/Yahoo - Chat with people from IRC
ICQ - Chat with people from an online volunteer organization I used to be with
Jabber - Control IRC bots while not connected
Obviously, if I used an individual client for each protocol, my computer would be overrun with buddy lists. This leaves few alternatives. Out of the multi-protocol clients, Trillian, Miranda IM and Pidgin are the most popular. I cannot stand Pidgin, so that rules out one of the three. For years I was an avid Trillian user. Eventually I realized that Trillian was a little slow to boot up, and it often crashed. Someone suggested Miranda IM, and I have been using it ever since. Miranda IM loads fast, and offers many different plugins or add-ons.
Another good “client” is Meebo. It is a website you can go to and log into multiple clients at once. The only down side is that it is linked to a web browser, so if you close the browser; so if you log out of all of your IM clients. It is a great thing to use when you are out of town, and need to check in.
I have noticed that Miranda IM crashes quite a bit when new versions are released. However, the bugs are usually corrected fairly fast. If you use different protocols for chat, and are an unhappy Trillian user; there are other options out there!
-Justin
Tags: instant messaging, multi-protocol, trillan, miranda im
5 Comments
the oracle
November 8th, 2007
at 1:09pm
During the time I was using Trillian, I liked the fact that it would allow me to keep track of building amounts of e-mail in the AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail accounts, with popups to show new messages received. Pidgen (note spelling) did not do this so I stopped using it. I stopped use of Trillian when Yahoo and AOL changed the way things were reported, and Trilian no longer gave me correct message counts.
Does Miranda do this?
Albert Sims
November 9th, 2007
at 8:26am
I was using Trillian Pro up to a few months ago, until I switched over to Pidgin. Trillian was getting a bit “crashy”, and I felt duped by them anyway, because I went ahead and renewed my “pro subscription” for another year last December, because they announced “Astra” was coming January 2007. Well, here it is nearly 2008, and Astra still hasn’t had a final build. At least Pidgin seems to be worked on by developers more.
Liam
November 9th, 2007
at 3:03pm
I have used all mentioned but have to stick to Trillian because out of all mentioned it is the only one that supports webcams. Unless I am in Linux I use Kopete.
UncleDoug
November 9th, 2007
at 5:27pm
Was wondering about something?
There are several programs like Miranda and Trillian that also supports other IM programs like AIM and MSN, and you can chat with either protocol, But in a group chat does either, allow an AIM Buddy to read and respond to an MSN Buddy, that you brought into your group chat.
There might be one or two,but I am not sure?
The IM program I use does not have any plugins yet, but waiting patiently for the next beta which supposed to contain more interoperablity between IM programs, and a more commen IM interface.
It does have a donwload for Windows MAC and Linux but being written entirely in Java is no Small Puppy!
Again which IM programs currently out will allow AIM to chat with Yahoo in a group chat?
Hope this enhancement will be one of the new features when the “Beta” release finally arrives in the next few weeks.
UncleDoug
latinamami
May 13th, 2008
at 6:40pm
Yo