gaim and yahoo...

[dugan at passwall.com]

On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 12:06:19PM -0700, Eric Eisenhart wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 09:53:09AM -0700, ME wrote:
> > Some of you may have used AOL Instant Messaging, MSN Messenger, Yahoo
> > Messenger, icq, irc, or other chat based systems within windows/MacOS.
> > 
> > If you are looking for a good prgram that can do all of these in one
> > product, you may want to check out "gaim".
> 
> I have to strongly go along with this recommendation.
> 
> I've used similar programs (Fire, Proteous and Trillian) and for IM/chat,
> Gaim is the best.  I used the tabbed interface so everything is in one
> window and (yes, really) I have, right at this moment, 2 AIM accounts logged
> in, 2 ICQ accounts, one each of Jabber, MSN and Yahoo and, of course, IRC in
> 3 channels.
> 
> At least one of those others has a tabbed (or similar) interface available;
> none of them handle IRC nearly as well (IIRC, Fire, for example, doesn't do
> private messages and all messages you send to a channel are sent as
> "actions" instead of regular mesages)
> 
> I'd also tried using jabber clients a while ago; it's a nice protocol and a
> good idea, but in practice finding a server that supported the protocols I
> wanted and was actually up reliably was difficult, so I switched to using an
> integrated client.  In theory reliability should have been *higher*, since
> the task of upgrading support for individual networks when they became
> incompatible is offloaded to a single place, but in practice it was lower
> because I cared more if MSN or Yahoo or AIM was working that week.
> 
> One weakness of most of these integrated clients (Gaim and Gabber/Jabber
> included) is that typically they're incapable of (or bad at) setting up a
> new account or configuring it beyond the basic level; so you end up wanting
> to install the "real" client once somewhere, create an account, configure the
> details appropriately, then switch to using that account through Gaim.

Oh, they are getting better. Much better. I am on the CVS bleeding edge
of this (not much bleeding actually) for gaim, and the new account
subscription has imporved a great deal. I think that MSNM account
signups work much better than before, and adding people to your buddy
list, and notices of other being added to your works much better too.
 Version .60 alpha is just around the corner where we may see a shared
code sorce for windows and linux users. (Gaim under windows ;-)

Also, if you like the tab based system of gaim, then a future migration
to centericq is much easier. I only suggest using centericq if graphics
is an issue, or you have a slow connection for remote X-redir or slow
CPU where graphics are concerned.

-ME

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