Marin’s blog

Adium chat software review I’m used to keep only one application to handle my chats. ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, AIM … this one does that it all in a brilliant way

When I first bought my mac I was excited about using iChat. Altough actually using it wasn’t that big delight and even worst the icq for mac is horrible. I decided to search around and found the Adium which immediately caught my attention with its incredibly friendly icon - thumbs up for the guy who made it.

In brief Adium is what you need : it handles all your chat accounts, it’s stable and stylish, it has skins, icon sets, chat styles, smilies, file transfers, customized global or per account statuses … Honestly I never started again the iChat ever since I’ve got Adium…

What’s multiprotocol chat client ?

In brief for those who doesn’t know. Multiprotocol chat client is an application which connects you at the same time to your MSN, ICQ, AIM, Gadu Gadu and whatever else instant messengers you signed for. It keeps your chat buddies together and lets you talk with them within a single window. (or many windows if you prefer) What you gain ? You don’t have to install and use many different IMs to stay connected. Even if you use MSN only for work and ICQ for friends it’s easy - you can set invisible or not available status for your MSN buddies and be available for your ICQ buddies. Neat heh ?

Let’s see how it works ?

The installation procedure is standard drag and drop to Applications folder. First time you run the application you’ll need to setup your IM accounts. For every account you create you set your username and password and sometimes you might have couple of additional options you can tweak per account.

Here’s the popup menu for creating a new account … pretty impressive list of protocols :

After you’re finished you setup which accounts you want to connect by clicking the checkbox next to your respective username. If you permanently want to hide from some of your buddies now is the time to click “Status” from the main menu - you’ll find there the list of accounts you did setup - and select your custom status per account.

So that’s it basically, you’re online and you have your buddy list in the main window of Adium

What else does it do ?

Well it does it all - all features you have in any multiprotocol chat client. But this one is pretty - a real OS X application.

One thing I was really fascinated with is the chat history. Adium keeps history record of your chat but not only that. It also builds an index and it has a real spotlight (like) search in these records. You get immediate search results with result ranking (!). That feauture is really something.

The software is really polished, the guys paid attention to lots of small details (which I cannot say about all OS X application) in order to make the user’s life and experience easier.

I particularly like the files drag and drop. Drag a picture from finder to your chat windows (where you would normally write your chat message) and drop it - a thumbnail will appear in the message so you can preview what you’re sending (nobody wants to send by mistake to his girlfriend that photos from last company party … )

If you look around the preferences window you’ll find a lot of things to play with

In addition too all functionality you get with Adium, you can also browse their website for installing themes, icon sets and all other kinds of extras.

How do I get it ?

Go grab a free copy of Adium at their home page : http://www.adiumx.com/

For extras go to the separate extras web site : http://www.adiumxtras.com/

If you are really happy with the program you can donate to the project by visiting their web site and clicking Donate link

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Hope I was usefulMarin