I have been using ICQ since the early days. Well, not that early because my UIN still has 7 digits. For a long while ICQ has been my primary, if not exclusive, instant messenger (IM) client because most my contacts are on ICQ. However, over the last 2 years I have started getting more contacts from other IM networks, and now I am running ICQ, MSN and Yahoo concurrently. Moreover, at work we have also been using Jabber as our internal communication bridge, when the developers chat with other employees in Singapore and Perth. It is just getting a bit messy, and my Windows sys tray can easily cluster with different flashing icons waiting for my response. All of them use a big chunk of memory. All of them have different interface, and all of them keep their own copies of things.
Yuk!
And I hate the original clients. Most of them are full of useless bells and whistles that you will never touch. They all pop up advertise, and they all try to make your desktop their own. A few things I have tried previously…
Trillian – a good looking IM client that supports AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and MSN. Nice support of different protocols. Reasonably stable. Good looking skins. However, there are some bugs that really annoys me. It hogs memory. It’s history support is pretty basic – all the previous conversations are stored in a plain text file. Vivian is still using it, but I have abandoned it and moved on.
Miranda ICQ – a nice small ICQ client. It is actually probably the best ICQ client I have used because of its plugin architecture that lets many developers contribute their bits and pieces to form an extremely functional Mirabils ICQ replacement. It also has integrated MSN support for a while, as well as a recently developed Yahoo protocol plugin. It is light in memory consumption, and its plain interface suits me well. I have been using Miranda ICQ for more than a year now, and I am still using it at the moment. However, besides ICQ protocol, none of the other protocols support SOCK5 proxy. It’s proprietary single-binary-file database format also scares me – what happens if it gets corrupted? Moreover, I think I have found something more suitable for me….
Jabber.
For the past few days, I have been using Just Another Jabber Client to connect to my work’s Jabber 1.4.2 server, running MSN Transport, ICQ Transport, Yahoo Transport and AIM Transport (even though I am not using AIM). Jabber is now the gateway to all my IM needs as it handles all the protocols/interfaces I need, centrally. JAJC is nice – good looking, implemented all the features I need (and all the features that I don’t need), Unicode supports and yet stay low in memory usage. Jabber protocol is also open – you can implement you own server side features easily, and there are bindings for many different programming languages.
I feel satisfied now :)
Updated 5 April: I’ve changed the URL for JAJC. Jabber.ru seems to be dead at the moment, and I just realised that there is a new URL for that excellent Jabber client.
Hey scotty….
ever tried trillian?? it combines ICQ/MSN/and all the rest of the messenger programs together into one…might be a little buggy, but it works.. ;)
Yeah. I’ve tried Trillian – do read my post. It uses more memory than it should, and I do not appreciate its user interface design. Some part of Trillian is just not very well polished. “History” feature is very important to me, but Trillian only uses a simple text file and notepad to display its history. It has not been actively developed, since its Pro version comes out.
Hey, would anyone help me on how to get in JAJC? I’ve downloaded the software but I still can’t get my MSN, YAHOO or ICQ to work with it. Thanks in advance.
Iv
If you are on OS X you can’t beat Proteus. AOL, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and Jabber
It really sucks that ICQ staff cant make a plugin for ICq to allow ICQ users communicating with MSN users.
And I agree with you about Miranda, have been using it for about a year now and it is totally satisfying.
But seriously… there are many ICQ users there who uses both MSN Messenger AND ICQ… simultaneous clients can screw things up a bit if you’re talking with people on both nets at the same time, hehe. So why doesnt someone just develope a plugin for ICQ OR MSN Messenger so that these two IM’s can communicate with eachother? Wouldnt that be the best solution?
/Regards, Anna Eriksson, Sweden.
Hey Scott..
I’ve been using AIM for a while but started using ICQ because more of my contacts were using it. ICQ is a RAM hog, I love miranda.
Looking forward to your auctionscipts coming out.
I’m in agreement here with only one exception. There is absolutely no support for JAJC other than sending an email to the author.(and don’t try to tell me in needs none). Without a FAQ, help file, readme, or any documentation, you are left in the cold trying to set it up and add users. Not that it is too terribly difficult, but I would like something to fall-back on when the going gets rough. Yes call it a crutch if you wish, but I could use it right now.
Miranda (http://www.miranda-im.org) has progressed steadily in the mean time and now also supports most Jabber client functions, which means you have the choice of either using a plug-in for native support of the major protocols or going through Jabber. Most of them now also support SOCKS5.
I use it to connect to ICQ, ICQ groupware, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, IRC, Gadu-Gadu, Tlen, Battle.Net (yes you can even send ICQ messages from within a game of Starcraft or Warcraft), NetSend/SMB, EmLAN, VyPress, mPhantom, and IRC. I can get RSS newsfeeds, the weather from two different sources and everything all at the same time at a memory footprint of ‘only’ 2MB.
There’s http://www.easymessage.net that claims to have the smallest download but it uses up at least 4MB RAM when installed. Miranda does not.
The only thing that Trillian has over Miranda right now is DCC in IRC. I first used Trillian too: it did support SOCKS5 but not for peer-to-peer connections which is what I needed for file transfers to work without portmappings and the possibility for some user management (which network users can or cannot send files). The ICQ plugin for Miranda also supports SOCKS5 for direct connections which Trillian lacked — then again Trillian supports DCC in IRC and Miranda does support everything in IRC EXCEPT DCC…
Still given the huge functionality (it even replaces winpopup/net send and serves as controlled a remote reboot tool which you can use across a firewall from the outside) and relatively moderate memory usage and its speed I much prefer Miranda at the moment (using nightly build 0.3). The database problem can be solved using the database editor and exporting everything (although a hookup to an SQL server would be great).
You can forward incoming messages too, be it through E-mail (and thus SMS and pagers if you use the proper gateways), netsend broadcasts and other stuff (you can even send events from your own scripts and batch files with the right plugins as a means of alerting you or sending log files).
In any case, I’m happy with Miranda since I can now also use it as a Jabber client (although not as advanced / developed as JAJC when it comes to ‘just Jabber’). It works. Need to be online with more user names? Just copy the protocol plugins (.DLL) and rename them to say plugin-name2 (like icq1.dll, icq2.dll, etc.) and you’re all set. This is particularly useful for bnetmessenger.dll so you can logon to different Blizzard gateways and keep your messages coming in so you’re not cut off from communications while playing your game.
Trillian is HORRIBLE. Not only is it bloatware, a memory hog, and unstable on lower end systems, but it’s development staff is hateful and their community is worse. I cannot in good conscience support software created by such grossly immoral people… so I don’t. There are so many better FREE options that are updated FREQUENTLY and supported by helpful, friendly, who want nothing to do with politically”correct” ilk.
Mirana-im.org springs readily to mind as does GAIM.
need help gettin AiM to work on a school computer using Novell border management….vscoy00 is my aim s/n at home if anyone would care to help me out…..38787948 is my UIN for ICQ…thanks
Hi,
leza here,im trying to download msn but it keeps coming back failed,i can install yahoo no probs but not msn,i have windows 98 any ideas ??????
thanks leza