Which IM program do you use? Anyone use an all in one type program?

[fujiyama]

What's the best? I use AOL just because most friends are on it. I don't really like it. I dislike the ads for one.

How are trillian? GAIM? Miranda (I might be wrong with the name)?

[ffm172]

1. Yahoo Messenger

it is ok. and the other night I had a conference with xmas and freebird. it was fun

[dutchdemocrat]

2. Skye

Because you can talk via VOIP as well.

www.skype.com

Free

[KitchenWitch]

3. don't you mean Skype?

[dutchdemocrat]

9. Whoops

Missed a p.

[Klapaucius]

4. All in one...

I use GAIM for windows at work. It's pretty solid. Some of the functionality, like webcam, isn't there, but it'll happen eventually.

At home, I use GAIM to connect to 5 different accounts, I don't like running more programs than I have to.

K.

[MrScorpio]

5. Yahoo messenger

My fave

[ghostsofgiants]

6. I use MSN Messenger and Yahoo seperately and I use Miranda IM for AIM/ICQ

Miranda isn't overly flashy, but it's extremely customizable and you can get some really cool plugins for it.

[Freebird12004]

7. I look for IMs that don't crash.

AOL and I don't see eye to eye on customer service- I tried them back when I got my first computer. MSN had too many weird messages that interrupted my day and ICQ is just plain nuts.

A computer geek friend tried trillian and thought it was okay and another was having nothing buy trouble with it.

Yahoo is the most user friendly service that I've found.

[progressor]

8. GAIM

Tried Trillian first - it sucked. Ugly non-intuitive interface.

GAIM is great. Free. Open-source. Has some trouble with file transfers, but since I don't really use IM that often, it works fine.

Also, you can't register screen names through it.

I love it, though. Get it at gaim.sourceforge.net.

Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise Messenger, and Zephyr networks.

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