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Archive for June 10th, 2007

Jun 10 2007

Review about 6 free multi-service IM clients

I found an interesting review made by ExtremeTech about some of currently available multi-services Instant Messenger (IM) clients supporting at least all 3 majors IM services (MSN, Yahoo, ICQ). While the option for Mac users is limited to Adium, it exists few Web 2.0 based solutions such meebo and eBuddy and a bunch of classic software for Windows-based computer. Etremetech's prefered choice is the long existing Trillian Pro version (25 USD) but they also speak about PC-World prefered SightSpeed (also for MacOS) and the Swiss Army knife-like Raketu (I plan to test both of them in the coming days).

The list will grow up again with soon release of Orgoo, which aims to integrate email, IM, chat, SMS, and video messaging into one interface.

To sum up the six services in this review roundup, here's a table comparing their features:

	Adium	eBuddy	Meebo	Meetro	Pidgin	Trillian

Services supported:
AIM	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
MSN/Windows	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Yahoo	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
ICQ	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
IRC	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Jabber/Google	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes**
Bonjour/Rendezvous	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	Yes**

Multiple simultaneous service login	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ad free	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Tabbed message window	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes
Contacts in groups	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Message history	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Text formatting	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Themes/skins	Yes	No	Just colors	No	No	Yes
Group chat support	Only join existing	Yes	Yes	No	Only join existing	Yes
Buddy icons	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Audio chat	No	No	No	No	No	Yes**
Video chat	No	No	No	No	No	Yes**
Mac/Windows	Yes/No	Yes/Yes	Yes/Yes	Yes/Yes	Yes*/No	No/Yes
Web-based	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Plugins	No	No	No	Yes, but only 2 available	Yes	Yes