AIM Apps

I've been using the old Dead AIM for a good while. That said, I've been looking to upgrade. I tried out Trillian a while back, but i found all the extra features (MSN/ICQ/etc) to be useless. I hear Gaim is nice, and works with windows now too. What do you guys use & recomend?

gaim is good for aim, but it really sucks for msn. dont have a yahoo account, so i can say anything for that.

>>1
GAIM is fine if you don't mind it taking lots of RAM (Trillian does, too, anyways) and the retarded font size bug on Windows which makes text appear like rat anus unless you edit some text file in %CommonProgramFiles%\GTK2 .

>>2
it really sucks for msn
Why? I noticed no difference. In fact, I moved from Trillian to GAIM because of a bug in Trillian which wouldn't show me authorization requests.

Personally I like MirandaIM more than GAIM for windows, but it looks ugly as hell by default and takes some tweaking.

bitlbee

Why the fuck do people complain about Trillian's usage so much? this isn't command line, it's not 1983, we're not using baud modems. 1GB of memory is standard, and you can't spare 5MB half of which falls into the pagefile? For fuck's sake, is that really the only criticism you have? Do you hate cracking programs that much?

GAIM is the bloated shit you should keep away from. MirandaIM is the alpha shit that will be stable in maybe 2007. If you want a client that works, has plugins, skins, and is totally stable: Trillian.

>>6
I forgot to read the OP fully. All of the "extra features" (also known as wide support) can be disabled and deleted.

>>6
Same reason Firefox shouldn't use 1GB of RAM and iTunes shouldn't use 50MB. Everyone with half a clue has an idea how much RAM a certain program type should use. And those values, like Trillian, are too much.

the AIM client itself uses 26 megs of memory. How much can Trillian possibly use?

>>9
The version of Trillian I use uses 15MB.

I still think that's too much, but after testing a number of mainstream IM clients, 15MB is the low end.

>>10
Currently running GAIM with two networks, taking 11.8 MB of working set in Windows, and Skype with 13.8 MB.

>>6
I don't complain about usage, but I complain about waste. Less RAM means I have more RAM for other uses or the system cache, faster loading, faster application switching, and so on. Applications don't have to eat half a gig of RAM just because it's 2006. And oh yes, I do work on the command line most of the time.

>>11
If you want working set, then Trillian uses the same amount.

I'm surprised GAIM is so low for you though. Doesn't it still use GTK2?

>>11
I'm not a typical "if my browser uses half my memory, it's cool" person. I strive for utility as well. But a communication client that supports every major platform out there, as well as all their options and features, is supposed to take up less than the fucking Task Manager? That's asking a bit much. And we've just established that the issue was that you had all the plugins you did not use enabled (5 clients open, effectively.) If my math is right, Trillian actually uses less than GAIM with two networks.

If you use command line so much, why don't you just get a command line client without all these wasteful high-memory thingamabobs and butans?

Fuck all these balkanised networks, stick with Jabber.

>>12
I'm surprised GAIM is so low for you though. Doesn't it still use GTK2?
It is, I'm pretty surprised myself, I'd swear I remember seeing it took like 22 MB (working set). Maybe I had it running for quite some time and Windows eventually pulled useless pages out of RAM, but I had the contact list and one message window active when I measured that so it's not like it was minimized and mostly paged out waiting for an event.

>>13
why don't you just get a command line client
Good question, can you recommend any? Willing to try them.

>>13
While I agree with a lot of your post, I have issue with this:

That's asking a bit much.

Not really. There was a small and highly functional multi-network IM for windows that used half the RAM any other major IM did (Trillian, GAIM, Miranda, etc). It did most of what the major IM did too.

I no longer recall the name, but it doesn't matter since the author sold the code and copyright to some commercial entity, which promptly killed it through total neglect. Too bad.

>>15
Centericq is pretty good.

btlbee + irssi is a possibility for CLI.