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Geek Culture / whats your favorite IM

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gamerboots
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 02:20 Edited at: 7th Dec 2009 02:33
for those who use chat programs, what is your favorite program to use ? yahoo, aim , windows live messenger, ect,..
and what is it about it that you like most ?

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Gamerboots~
puppyofkosh
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 02:21
I'm starting to like "pidgin".
gamerboots
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 02:31
I have never tried that one. What do you like about it the most though?

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Gamerboots~
NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 02:32
Pidgin, does pretty much everything, free, simple and lightweight. I hate the bloat of the official MSN, both in visual design and in programming.

Athlon64 2.7gHz->OC 3.9gHz, 31C, MSi 9500GT->OC 1gHz core/2gHz memory, 48C, 4Gb DDR2 667, 500Gb Seagate + 80Gb Maxtor + 40Gb Maxtor = 620Gb, XP Home
Air cooled, total cost £160
gamerboots
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 02:40
another interesting question is whitch ones do you think work well on windows 7 (32 or 64 bit)

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Gamerboots~
BearCDP
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 02:44 Edited at: 7th Dec 2009 02:45
Just use this:


It'll only work on your home network, but

...


Pidgin seems pretty slick. I haven't used it a whole ton, but someone I worked with wrote plugins for Pidgin and the Logitech G15 keyboard so that you could temporarily change the display on the keyboard to show your Pidgin chats and reply to them without having to minimize your game.

Yodaman Jer
User Banned
Posted: 7th Dec 2009 02:44
Right now I mostly use Yahoo (it's always been mt favorite). I'm thinking about trying Pidgin though, so that I can talk to people on MSN, AIM, Yahoo, etc.,...

For web-based, Gmail's my favorite.

Benjamin
22
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 03:10
I use Miranda IM as WLM is such a crappy piece of software (bloated and buggy). I tried Pidgin but I didn't really like it.
Hador
User Banned
Posted: 7th Dec 2009 03:32
i like skype, not hard to use and has voice too.

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Jeku
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 04:02 Edited at: 7th Dec 2009 04:03
I use MSN and it's not buggy for me at all. I like it purely because all my friends and coworkers use it.


Senior Web Developer - Nokia
DJ Almix
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 04:29
Xfire best one hands down has voice, text, live video game broadcasting, and some other really cool features.

Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 05:12
Currently, Facebook chat, not logged into an IM in a loooooooooooooong time. Facebook is the only place at the moment I stay in contact with friends via internet...excluding interest friends who I talk to on forums...much like I am doing now.

Agent Dink
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 07:20
Pidgin!

MISoft Studios - Silver-Dawn Gorilda is lost!

Yodaman Jer
User Banned
Posted: 7th Dec 2009 07:35
@Seppuku:

How well does Facebook chat work in the UK? Over here in the US it absolutely sucks. It's so buggy and glitchy I almost never use it.

Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 07:37
It's only slightly glitchy for me (switching page might make previous disappear then reappear later), but nothing to stop me from having a convo with a friend.

Yodaman Jer
User Banned
Posted: 7th Dec 2009 07:50
Quote: "(switching page might make previous disappear then reappear later)"


Same thing happens here, as well as sometimes taking forever to send a message, people appearing to go offline and confusing FB chat (and frustrating both I and the friend I'm attempting to talk to), and sometimes it just won't let my messages go through period (I get the classic "Oops, something went wrong" error message or sometimes even the "You don't have permission to do that" message").

Indicium
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 08:44
I use windows live messenger, never had any problems with it
demons breath
21
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Location: Surrey, UK
Posted: 7th Dec 2009 17:27
@Coffee - I'm UK too and I get the same thing as you - it rarely works, so I just don't bother. I'm not much for IMing anyway though (although I am actually on WLM for about the 5th time in 2 years...)

Asteric
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 17:56
Windows Live Messenger for text chatting. Skype for video sharing and chat. Xfire for gaming chat.

Aertic
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Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 7th Dec 2009 19:07
Numba wannnn: Steam
Numba twoooo: Skype
Numba freeee: mIRC(if it counts).

Misspelling is fun.

David R
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 22:42
I've stopped using MSN because... well, it sucks.

Skype has become my #1 (brilliant with outside dialing and a local phone number) and Wave is starting to become a sort of #2 IM for me

09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
Phaelax
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Posted: 7th Dec 2009 23:01
I can't believe so many people love pidgin. I used it before and the UI is just hideous.

Yahoo is by far my least favorite, and yet somehow has recently become the dominate IM it seems like. Recent updates to it this past year have made it buggy, it's a huge drain on memory (100+ MB), and those stupid IM environments you can't prevent your friends from turning on.

MSN is also bloated and the underlying protocol is a poor design if you ask me.

AIM's recent GUI is a lot better than in recent years, it's closer to the design of AIM Lite. But it still has advertisements (which Im sure a DLL hack would fix) and a large message box at the top which just wastes space. And its tab support doesn't fully work as it should. Most efficient of the existing protocols I believe.

ICQ, well what can I say, it's ICQ.


As far as overall clients go, I think Adium X on the Mac is by far the best. It uses the same libraries as Pidgen but has a much nicer GUI. On Windows, I have yet to find a client I like. I should get back to writing my own or find a way to port Adium over to Windows platform.


> SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0
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Agent Dink
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Posted: 8th Dec 2009 00:05
Pidgin is lightweight, there's no ads, and you can talk to almost anyone on any service with it. Also you can reskin it with GTK themes to make it less hideous. Otherwise it's almost layed out the same as old AIM...

MISoft Studios - Silver-Dawn Gorilda is lost!

NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 8th Dec 2009 00:08
Might I ask in what way is it hideous? Here, on XP, it's using all system colours and standard toolbars with the correct spacing and it's beautifully simple. No mess or crap. Messages in dialog boxes like notifications aren't quite there but it's by no means hideous.

Athlon64 2.7gHz->OC 3.9gHz, 31C, MSi 9500GT->OC 1gHz core/2gHz memory, 48C, 4Gb DDR2 667, 500Gb Seagate + 80Gb Maxtor + 40Gb Maxtor = 620Gb, XP Home
Air cooled, total cost £160
Phaelax
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Posted: 8th Dec 2009 01:00
Just downloaded Pidgin, give it another shot. Feels like I'm back on windows 95. Wish it would let me shrink the cell heights of the buddy list, but i'll look for some themes and see the looks improve any.

I admit it's easy to use, but to me just looks so dated.


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Lemonade
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Posted: 8th Dec 2009 01:34
I don't know about MSN being bloated...it runs perfectly fine and fast on my computer. Also, I would rather have MSN's "bloatware" than Pidgin's dated graphics...like Phaelex said, it looks so bad (especially in Win 7).
Benjamin
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Posted: 8th Dec 2009 01:42
Quote: "I don't know about MSN being bloated...it runs perfectly fine and fast on my computer."


Just because it runs fine on a decent computer, that doesn't mean it isn't bloated.
Phaelax
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Posted: 8th Dec 2009 01:46
I was referring more to the interface being bloated. Yea it runs fine on my machine too, but like Benjamin said, that doesn't mean anything.


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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 8th Dec 2009 01:52
MSN's interface is horridly bloated. Loads of space taken up by... well, nothing.

Athlon64 2.7gHz->OC 3.9gHz, 31C, MSi 9500GT->OC 1gHz core/2gHz memory, 48C, 4Gb DDR2 667, 500Gb Seagate + 80Gb Maxtor + 40Gb Maxtor = 620Gb, XP Home
Air cooled, total cost £160
Lemonade
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Posted: 8th Dec 2009 01:54
My point was:

bloated software (or interface) > very dated interface.

The only thing I dislike about MSN is the ads. I customize the interface to the way I like it.
Keo C
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Posted: 8th Dec 2009 02:02
Quote: "
bloated software (or interface) > very dated interface."


Agreed, Windows 7 will be my new server.


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Gunn3r
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Posted: 8th Dec 2009 08:03
@Phaelax, please port Adium. It's fantastic. I love Adium. I'm using MSN now, but I might switch back to Pidgin if I can find some good themes/plugins. I have to agree about the outdated interface. My machine can handle the bloatware (I know it's not an excuse to use it), so I've been skimping along with something that has a decent interface. When I had Pidgin before, I couldn't find a good interface, so I went back to MSN. That, and it started to act up weird. I couldn't transfer files properly from Pidgin to MSN. Although, MSN's photo sharing technique is HORRIBLE.

gamerboots
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Posted: 8th Dec 2009 14:34
well I personally like aim. Its graphically pleasing and the interface seems well orginized (IMO).

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Gamerboots~
Agent Dink
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Posted: 8th Dec 2009 22:08
The ads are terrible anymore though...

MISoft Studios - Silver-Dawn Gorilda is lost!

Indicium
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Posted: 8th Dec 2009 23:48
i found a way to remove the ads from windows live

in internet options, add the restricted site rad.msn.com
Lemonade
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Posted: 9th Dec 2009 07:00
Quote: "i found a way to remove the ads from windows live

in internet options, add the restricted site rad.msn.com "


Lolz, thanks. I was wondering if there was a way to remove them.

It works.
Quik
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Posted: 9th Dec 2009 18:18
using MSN for chatting with friends and such, Skype for voice and STEAM for chatting with in-game friends.


[Q]uik, Quiker than most
Phaelax
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Posted: 10th Dec 2009 08:41
This recent discussion of favorite IM clients has inspired me to bring back my old Sciurus project, an AIM client. Not that I'm trying to hijack this thread, but I could use some feedback that's related to this topic.

We all hate bloat and ads, so no sense in mentioning that here. But what are the other reasons all of you have for the clients that you did chose? What are the features you like best? Least? Thoughts on how buddy lists are set up and how you interact with them?

As my old client was strictly AIM and relied on the TOC2 protocol, I will be writing a new library for OSCAR as it will have better feature support. Yahoo and Jabber(XMPP) support are highly likely, but MSN is still a toss up at this point. I tried working with MSNP before and it was a royal pain.


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demons breath
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Posted: 10th Dec 2009 12:30
However, MSN is one of the most used ones... sorry but I wouldn't use anything else as the chums I wish to converse with have MSN exclusively...

Jeku
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Posted: 10th Dec 2009 18:36
Quote: "The only thing I dislike about MSN is the ads."


It's costing MS a lot of money to support MSN, with its millions of users. The other clients like Pidgin and Trillian use MSN's servers to send messages, so it's easy for them to self-support. It's really hard to complain about free


Senior Web Developer - Nokia
Preston C
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Posted: 10th Dec 2009 21:18
If you want a multi-client IM program, I can recommend Digsby. Supports a boat-load of protocols, though not as many as Pidgin, it's bloat has been severely reduced, supports Adium chat themes, and is completely skinnable.

It used to get some bad rep for having lots of memory management issues and secretly installing some cloud computing software into a recent update, but recent releases have allowed you to disable that during installation, and it uses less memory than an equivalent setup for Pidgin does.

AMD Opteron 185 Dual Core 2.6 Ghz | 2 GB RAM | 8800 GTS 640MB | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
gamerboots
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Posted: 11th Dec 2009 11:15
Quote: "
This recent discussion of favorite IM clients has inspired me to bring back my old Sciurus project, an AIM client....
But what are the other reasons all of you have for the clients that you did chose? What are the features you like best? Least? Thoughts on how buddy lists are set up and how you interact with them?"

Yes, sounds like a future project to me but there are two things.
on one side of the coin we have : why re-invent the wheel ? there are plenty of "good" internet messaging apps out there like msn,yahoo,pidgen,ect
on the other side we have : because I dont like the ones we have. They are bloated with addware and mine would be better.
It would be nice to make an app that is independent of either msn or ms servers, but what would you need to do that and exactly what would the cost be ? ....

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Gamerboots~
Phaelax
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Posted: 11th Dec 2009 13:06 Edited at: 11th Dec 2009 14:29
Wow, that program has a lot of crap in it. If you're not careful, you'll end up with multiple search toolbars, changed home pages, and adding your PC to a grid cluster.

Ooooo, I don't think so. I have to create a Digsby account on their page to manage my IM profiles? I think not! It's getting uninstalled right now.

@gamer,
I'm not talking about writing a new chat protocol, just a new client that supports the existing protocols like Pidgin.


I just came across a program called Empathy which runs in GNOME and it will support Adium themes.
http://live.gnome.org/Empathy/

I've also read a recent claim of Adium themes in Pidgin running on Ubuntu. Not sure about windows.

And for those curious about a port of Adium to the Windows platform, this is all I have to say:
"Unfortunately, Adium is written with very Mac specific code. Porting it to another platform would require rewriting the entire application" - Adium Trac

If it was Java, I'd say it's possible. But as it would have to be done in C++, it's beyond my skill.


> SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0
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gamerboots
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Posted: 11th Dec 2009 15:24
a new chat protocol.....hmmmmm

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Gamerboots~
Aaagreen
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Posted: 11th Dec 2009 17:12
Windows Live Messenger does everything I need in an IM. You can download a hack that removes the ads, but sometimes I see something of interest.

Jeku always gets drunk and tries to Moderate the ocean. Tirelessly slapping the waves as they roll in.
Phaelax
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Posted: 11th Dec 2009 22:37
Ok, I just got a little excited. I read an article about JavaFX supporting webkit, which means I could potentially support Adium themes in Java. If anyone is any good at GUI design in C#, my aim library has been ported over to .Net. I can't do it, don't know it well enough yet. I only ported it to .Net to learn C# and it's the only time I've ever used it. And yes, this program has become my new coding obsession.


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JoelJ
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Posted: 12th Dec 2009 08:02
I use Pidgin and Adium. Adium by far is the best, just no Windows / Linux support. I don't like Pidgin, but so far it's the best, sadly enough.

Your mother has been erased by a mod because it's larger than 600x120
gamerboots
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Posted: 12th Dec 2009 20:22
Quote: "And yes, this program has become my new coding obsession"

well atleast I know my thread inspired someone
has anyone attempted to create or already made a chat app that was done completely in dark basic pro ?

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Gamerboots~
NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 12th Dec 2009 20:33 Edited at: 12th Dec 2009 20:34
Pidgin: one of the three programs on the internet that doesn't ignore colour settings and as such works in a dark theme.



Wish it didn't insist upon calling it a "Buddy List" though.

Athlon64 2.7gHz->OC 3.9gHz, 31C, MSi 9500GT->OC 1gHz core/2gHz memory, 48C, 4Gb DDR2 667, 500Gb Seagate + 80Gb Maxtor + 40Gb Maxtor = 620Gb, XP Home
Air cooled, total cost £160

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demons breath
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Posted: 12th Dec 2009 21:26
Quote: "Wish it didn't insist upon calling it a "Buddy List" though."

Would be much better if there were different options - "Acquaintance Index" and the like - which admitted to the fact that many people on there would not be called "buddies", even if you were 50's enough to use the word.

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