CNET Editors' review
One of the most popular and customizable third-party clients in the multiservice chat category for Mac continues to impress. It supports multiple services, including AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Facebook, Windows Live, and Google Chat. Part of what made the original Adium so attractive was the multitude of IM service options, and that still forms the core appeal of this client. The interface is smooth and lean, fitting in well with the Mac OS. The client supports tabbed browsing, encrypted messaging, and you can transfer files to your buddies, though it can be hit or miss depending on what service you're using.
Recent updates have improved cross-service support (both in terms of security and performance), and the app continues to offer extensive options for customization, with a wide range of sounds, themes, colors, and other tweaks--including support for Growl, if you want to keep up with chats when you're not in Adium. Under the hood, the program shares the same open-source core as multiplatform client Pidgin.
Overall, despite some file-sharing quirks, Adium X is a must-download for those looking to connect with multiple services. If you've been looking for a chat client that plays nice with other chat services, Adium is an excellent choice on the Mac.
Publisher's Description
From Adam Iser:
Adium is a fast and free instant messaging client which supports AIM, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk, Yahoo! Japan, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Novell Groupwise, and Lotus Sametime. Adium supports beautiful WebKit message display, tabbed messaging, encrypted chat, file transfer, and more. Give it a try; you won't look back.
Adium is currently translated into Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Swedish, and Traditional Chinese.
What's new in this version: Services
- Facebook: Fixed connectivity. (#15544, #15583)
- Yahoo: Fixed avatars of contacts not updating correctly.
- Gadu-Gadu: Fixed logging in on PPC Macs. (#15153)
- Renamed the "Show Info" toolbar item to "Get Info" for consistency. (Ariel Chinn) (#14072)
- Turned off rubber band scrolling for the contact list, as this looks bad when using a borderless window. (#15455)
- Fixed a... See all new features
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All versions:
4.1 starsout of 82 votes
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Current version:
3.0 starsout of 1 votes
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My rating:
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"does ok but could be better"
Version: Adium 1.4.4
Pros
- like the floating dock and how you can customize it
- like how you can put all your messaging into one
- like how you can minimize it
- customizable in sounds and colors too
- could use some nicer lay-out/UI, but in terms of functions it seems good.Cons
- wish it supported skype which is the only stupid client that I'm stuck with opening separately
- FB seems to be still an issue.
- don't like how I keep getting messages from weirdos, but that might be a yahoo chat issue.
- a little bit of a cludgy old app designSummary
Overall, this is the only multiple client IM product I have on my desktop.
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