New Mac users, meet Adium
by Volker Weber
While Skype was down, I fired up Adium. This is not only one of the cutest applications ever, it also connects to AIM, Windows Live Messenger (MSN), Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, Jabber, Bonjour, Google Talk, .Mac, Sametime, Groupwise, QQ, Gadu-Gadu and LiveJournal Talk.
While Sametime Connect is taking up 130 MB of Real Memory, Adium consumes less than 25 MB on my machine, all while being connected to AIM, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, Jabber, Google Talk and Sametime 7.5.1. Don't even dare to look up the virtual memory Sametime Connect consumes.
Try it. It most likely has the easiest install instructions ever:
"Click Continue and the duck will take it from there."
Comments
We use Adium in the office for a while and it works very well. What I am missing is video-chat (just for fun) and application sharing.
In all chat software I tried I missed sharing of pictures (screenshots). Is there any chat software allowing to share pictures?
Yes, Sametime Connect. ;-)
iChat never stays connected for me; Adium means that I will be on AIM / iChat a lot more than I ever was. Yoda Duck dock icon recommended :)
Yoda Duck, install you must.
What are the 4th and 6th menubar icons from the right? I know what the others are :)
"In all chat software I tried I missed sharing of pictures (screenshots). Is there any chat software allowing to share pictures?"
Take a look at www.jingproject.com an excellent little tool from the folks that make Camtasia.
Andy, Missing Sync (4) and Nokia Media Transfer (6). I know, I have too many mobile phones. :-)
Ahhh, Adium... Yet another example of why the Mac is such a great platform - the quality of freeware/shareware is so much better than on Windows ;-)
Stuart: To be correct, Adium is not freeware and not shareware. Adium is free software. It is based on libpurple and came from the former GAIM linux software.
With regard to screenshots, it's the only advantage that iChat has over Adium I think. You can copy and paste direct from Grab into iChat. You can also drag and drop images direct into an iChat session.
Although Adium allows you to copy and paste images into it, they do not get sent. Not sure why. It may be the remote client that cannot accept them (MSN).
Ever since I own a Mac, I use Adium, in my eyes the greatest IM app ever. The only challenge for me is that you never exactly known what smiley sets the other person in the other network has installed. =)
I am sort of surprised to see vowe praising Adium here since he has repeatedly told that Skype is the best IM ever. Which brings me to the only thing that could make Adium even better: Skype integration.
You should not be surprised. Skype is better. Audio works, video works. Both accross platforms. You can also send binaries without any problems. But since Skype was out last week, Adium was "plan b".
Yes, I understood that. The point I was trying to make is if Skype were free, Adium would probably have it implemented.
Shoulda read the headline, got myself all excited at replacing Trillian (which doesn't talk to Google Talk in the free version and seems very slow on startup)
