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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 Google Talk and MySpaceIM as well as 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 text-only messaging app.
Publisher's Description
From Pidgin:
Pidin (formerly known as 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.
Pidgin 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 2.2.0 adds a certificate manager, MySpaceIM support, XMPP improvements, and various bug fixes.
What's new in this version: Version 2.2.0 adds a certificate manager, MySpaceIM support, XMPP improvements and various bug fixes.
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All versions:
4.0 starsout of 282 votes
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Current version:
5.0 starsout of 2 votes
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My rating:
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Results 1-2 of 2
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"Good and Light"
Version: Pidgin 2.2.0
Pros
It has a very clean and easy interface even for e brand new Novice on computers.You can login to your accounts with maximum use of 18Mb of Ram.Everything is easy to understood in the menus. U dont Have video or calls but its ok, if you are talking to more than 4 contacts i dont think that you can use camera and voice for all of them.I m in Love with this program. Its close to perfection , very good work from the programers
Cons
I d like to see in future some kind of voice
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"Very good"
Version: Pidgin 2.2.0
Pros
I've been using this client for quite a while and I'm very impressed by the interface, plugins, and the effectiveness of this chat client because it suits my needs without all the bloatware and mess (aim 6&up) I would recommend this to anyone who is searching for a simple, multiclient chat program!
Cons
It disconnects sometimes due to bad proxy server and also takes a while to direct connect. You also can't see the process of transferring when through an IM window.
Results 1-2 of 2
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