Instant Messaging for the Masses »
For the masses of services, that is. AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo! Can the list get any longer? Don't answer that.
While I don't necessarily mind having accounts on multiple services, I do find it a bit of a pain to keep up with all of them individually. So I've dropped a few over the years (accounts are still there, I just never receive anything since I don't turn them on). Mostly because installing software for each just pushes me over the edge. I'm not the only one.
I've used Trillian. I like Trillian okay, and I even registered the software at some point. It's worth $30, if for nothing else than the option it gives you. But just like all the individual applications, I find it getting too big for my needs. I only need the messaging, thank you very much. Everything else? Pretty much useless to me.
So I've been using Gaim for a while. Gaim isn't pretty (though some themes are prettier than others). But it does what I need. It connects to every network I need to use. It allows me to group contacts, in case you also have multiple accounts spread across multiple contacts. And perahps most importantly, it's fast. Even on my 2Ghz laptop with plenty of memory, Trillian is slow. It's slow to load. It's slow to respond. It crashes with some regularity. Gaim is speedy and it doesn't crash. It also doesn't have all the bloat of other apps.
For functionality, Gaim's the winner in this contest hands-down.
