Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 30 September 2008 21:15
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
As David explains, IM is very popular these days, and lets you send text messages in a dedicated program, in real time, without needing to fire up your email.
Instant messaging is so popular that Windows comes with the Windows Messenger built-in as standard, and it’s one of the most popular IM programs in the world. Microsoft regularly updates it with newer and better versions, with the latest “Windows Live Messenger” available to download free of charge
here.
But Windows Messenger isn’t the only program around. There’s AOL Messenger, Skype, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ and more besides – with
Skype a personal favourite of mine, which I now use in preference to all others.
Because there are so many different IM programs, enterprising programmers decided to create IM software that spoke many “languages”, letting you be connected to all your friends, on almost any IM program, at the same time – using only one IM client instead of several.
As David explains in his article, Pidgin is an IM client that works with almost all major IM clients as soon as you download it.
The programs it works with include AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN/Windows Messenger, MySpaceIM, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo! Messenger and Zephyr.
And, better still, you can freely download it for Windows – not just Linux. Just go to Pidgin’s
site for more details.
Pidgin works on Mac OS X too, but this
article explains why you should use Adium instead of Pidgin if you’re a Mac user.
Now, at first, I thought to myself – Pidgin looks nice. But where’s the Skype support? Without Skype, Pidgin is useless to me, as I’ve expressly stopped using all those other clients, including Window Messenger, and just use Skype.
Well, there is a Skype plug-in for Pidgin, free for the taking if you want it, whether you’re a Linux, Mac or Windows user – please read on to page 3!
