Software Review: Pidgin - The best Instant Messenger

I was on look out for a perfect Instant messenger client, which have the ability to connect to all Instant messengers - Yahoo!, GoogleTalk, MSN, Redif etc… Being little consious on running all these messengers on system and hoggin all memory and CPU resources, un-necessary, I tried various tools - Trillian, Jabber… but nothing was much impressive and finally I came across this smart Open Source IM client - Pidgin, then onwards I never touched any of the other messengers. Its so impressive and the plugins are just desinged for the techies. Here’s more info on Pidgin.

What is Pidgin?

Pidgin is an instant messaging program for Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes. You can talk to your friends using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr.

Pidgin can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AIM, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.

Pidgin supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, and typing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more.

Pidgin runs on a number of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and other UNIX operating systems. Looking for Pidgin for OS X? Try Adium!

Pidgin integrates well with GNOME 2 and KDE 3.1’s system tray, as well as Windows’ own system tray. This allows you to work with Pidgin without requiring the buddy list window to be open at all times.

Get the latest version of Pidgin here: Download.

Try out and you wont look back again to Yahoo!/MSN/Rediff or any other messengers again!

~ by bijuk on November 28, 2007.