A while ago I started to use trillian basic and liked it until I heard that windows live was released and it looked a bit better for me to use, just a few weeks ago I’ve started to use trillian again and am hap with what it has. The other day I found out about trillian astra which is still in alpha testing so I would have to sign up to get the chance to use it but then I found out that my friend was already using it so I was able to get a invite from him. As soon as it installed everything looked amazing, the layout, the style, the new features this was looking to be the best messenger program I’d seen for a long time especially with the customization features like changing the skins. Sadly after a while the “alpha testing” started to kick in and vista did not like it at all in fact I ended up having a blue screen because of it (yay!!!). I haven’t yet tried this on my xp machine but will defiantly go for it as for using it on vista well I’ve gone back to using trillian basic 3 but I will defiantly be looking forward to astra when it is released on the iphone. 

More information on astra can be found here: http://www.trillian.im