Interoperability has been the Holy Grail of instant messaging for years. But squabbles among AOL, Microsoft, and others have prevented these companies from opening their services to competing IM client software. Fortunately, the open-source community recognizes no such limits and has come up with an excellent multiprotocol instant-messaging client called Gaim (free download). We looked at the alpha 3 version.
With Gaim, you can connect to AOL, AIM, ICQ, IRC, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo!, and an IM service based in Poland called Gadu-Gadu. The software is remarkably stable. The install took just a minute, and we were then able to launch Gaim and include the accounts from our various IM services. If you’ve used AOL Instant Messenger before, you’ll feel right at home with Gaim. The interface, which is clean, neat, and uncomplicated, resembles AIM’s but without ads—a notable exception. You can easily import existing buddy lists with just a couple of clicks. After that, all of your buddies are listed automatically. Since you can connect using multiple services, all users have icons next to their names that designate the services they are using. If you want more info, such as usernames, idle times, or warning levels, you just select a name in your buddy list and click the Get More Info button. The info available for a buddy depends on which service that person is using.
Gaim comes with the typical IM features—you can change font sizes and colors, use emoticons, implement away messages, and so on. The emoticons change according to whom you’re chatting with and which IM client your chat partner is using. If you’re chatting with an AIM user, for example, you get the AIM emoticons.
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