Scan & Fix 50 registry issues FREECNET Editors' review
Your mother uses AOL Instant Messenger. Your spouse prefers MSN. Your office insists on Yahoo. What are you going to do? You could run all those chat clients at once, or you could use Gaim, now renamed Pidgin. Like Trillian, Fire, and other third-party IM clients, this open-source messaging application lets you access multiple IM networks from one window, including lesser-known protocols such as Jabber and Gadu-Gadu.
Pidgin's biggest change is the redesigned interface. The Buddy List can be viewed in Basic or Advanced mode, and the most important features, including the Plug-in List, have been graduated from the Preferences window into their own panes. Twenty-two plug-ins come prepackaged as Pidgin repositions itself as a highly extensible chat client.
The IM features are unimpeachable: smileys (you can find tons of emoticons on the developer's site), file transfers, and multiperson chats. The Buddy Pounce feature lets you automatically perform certain actions (play a sound, execute a command, open an IM window) when a contact signs on or off. Pidgin also gets lots of intangibles right: logging and time-stamping, for instance, are well-executed and easy to access. However, it lacks IP telephony and video conferencing, and there are still some bugs--most notably in the Help menu. Still, Pidgin remains a highly recommended messenging app.
Publisher's Description
From Pidgin:
Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM (Oscar and TOC protocols), ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr networks.
Gaim users can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.
Gaim supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer (coming soon), away messages, typing notification, and MSN window closing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, and more.
Version 1.5.0 offers various account bug fixes and limited file transfer support.
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All versions:
4.0 starsout of 282 votes
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Current version:
3.5 starsout of 14 votes
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My rating:
Write review
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"Good But Not For MSN Users"
Version: Gaim 1.5
Pros
It's easy to use with good enough security, not spyware/adware, great custom themes and plug-ins but...
Cons
...it crashed every time I tried to log into msn, so what's the point? There are 2 much better chat clients than this I recommend.
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"Best multi-client IM"
Version: Gaim 1.5
Pros
Simplicity. It's not over-the-top graphically like trillian, but does provide the functionality for the different IM protocols.
Cons
MSN issues. I think this is more of a MSN problem but i do get "switchboard" errors from time to time.
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"Worthy of your awe"
Version: Gaim 1.5
Pros
It has everything compacted into one, and on top of that it has increadably useful things that come standard, like buddy pouncing and aliases. Along with it's built-in added functionality it can have plug-ins which plug-ins are always fun. Possibly one of the best parts about it is that it's simple and takes up very little system resources.
Cons
... It crashes sometimes.
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"SO IT CRASHES why the FIVE STARS"
Version: Gaim 1.5
Pros
Messenger is so much hasstle, it slows down the starting of a computer, and then uses slow Explorer FOR your hotmail account. Gaim uses Firefox to goto your mail, it allows instant access to mail, and reports when new messenges come. I have 2 hotmail accounts which are stored and I can check them both in a minute. You can chat with a messenger contact, this WORKS!!!
Cons
This is the Linux version I am talking about for Ubuntu. Which is free and works on wireless and installs easily, and has many other free programs.
PS NO ADVERTS TOO!
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"Decent."
Version: Gaim 1.5
Pros
Much better chat saving preferences.
Cons
The notifications suck. The windows don't flash at times.
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"Upgrade to gaim 2.0"
Version: Gaim 1.5
Pros
For all of you saying msn is crashing, upgrade to gaim 2.0 beta 5, they fixed it.
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"works nice, except for msn"
Version: Gaim 1.5
Pros
sign in with all at once
Cons
i'm getting the error with msn, as well. hope they fix this.
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"A very excellent program. No problems connecting to MSN."
Version: Gaim 1.5
Pros
This program is extremely customizable. Uses the default smilies of the provider, but you can change them if you want. I like the larger buddy icons, but if you prefer them smaller you can easily change it. Capable of sending MSN nudges and Yahoo buzzes. Because it is open-source, there are nearly unlimited plugins to add to the functionality. Version 1.5 does not work with MSN, but if you go to their webpage gaim.sourceforge.net, you can download GAIM 2.0 which works with anything.
Cons
Since GAIM 2.0 is still in beta, it is sometimes buggy, but it still works extremely well; I don't know much about software and I can get it to run with no problems. It seems that gaim has no yahoo conference-chat capabilities.
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"Crashes every time i try to use it."
Version: Gaim 1.5
Pros
I know from earlier use that Gaim Messenger is a program that actually works to my advantage.
Cons
But this version seems to crazh every single time i try to use it. whats up with that? A program that i know is good from experiense should work. Not crash damnit.
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"Crashed every time I tried to use it"
Version: Gaim 1.5
Cons
It crashed every single time I tried to connect to MSN. 'GAIM has encountered a problem and needs to close' So it was effectively useless for me. Some minor points: it is nowhere near as intuitive as Trillian, and windows kept popping up all the time. It also took up 16.5 MB of disk space, which seems an awful lot. Finally, it does not come with an uninstaller, which is a minor annoyance. In summary, I'm very disappointed as I had heard good things about this program. I see that other reviews have admitted that it crashes every time it tries to connect to MSN, and have still rated it highly. Fair enough if you don't use MSN, but for me, that renders it basically useless. :(
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