I am sure most people who online often nowadays is using instant messenger like MSN, Yahoo, Google G Talk, Face Book Chat, or maybe even ICQ and IRC.
But usually people might be running a few different softwares to chat in these instant messenger networks such as Windows Live Messenger for MSN, Yahoo messenger for Yahoo, and you will have to login to facebook.com just to chat in Face Book chat.
But running so many so programs and login to the websites, it will slow down your computer as these programs does takes a lot of RAM (memory).
The best way to overcome this problem is to run a program that able to connect to all these instant messenger network all at once.
Therefore, I would like to introduce this sophisticated software named Pidgin. And yeah, its logo is a pigeon.
This software is an opensource software where you may download the source code to modify it if you want and if you know how to. But I am not going to talk about programming it, I will only talk about its features in this post.
It is not like eBuddy, eBuddy run from a website and it is not a software. Pidgin is a software, you need to download and install it.
Pidgin is currently a default instant messenger software in Ubuntu Linux (the gnome version ones).
And it is also available in Windows, Mac OS and other platform versions.
To be honest, before I was a Ubuntu Linux user, I already using this in Windows XP.
It run smooth in all operating systems, so I don’t see any problem if you try it even though if you have only 128MB RAM in your computer (old computers). My computer was only 256MB RAM when I was still a Windows XP user last time and it did not hog memory like what Windows Live Messenger did.
Ok, now I will list up the instant messenger it support.
- MSN
- Yahoo
- Google GTalk
- MySpace IM
- Face Book Chat (via plugins)
- Twitter (via plugins_
- ICQ
- IRC
- AIM/AOL
- Bonjour
- Gadu-Gadu
- GroupWise
- SIMPLE
- Sametime
- XMPP
- Zephyr
Other networks can be enabled by downloading plugins and install it.
You not only able to connect into a few instant messenger network at the same time, you can also connect a few MSN account and a few Yahoo account at the same time! I am doing that due to I am using a separate account for business use instead of using my personal account.
It won’t take up much resource of your computer, unless you use it like the way I did, which using a little more computer resources.
How I use? I connect to 5 MSN account, 3 Yahoo account, 3 G Talk account, 1 Face Book Chat account, 1 IRC connection with 13 channel joined.
And guess what? It didn’t slow down my computer much with all these connections.
Besides its stability and low resource consuming, you can download a lot of plugins and install onto it.
You may even program a plugin and add on to it yourself without any restriction, if you know how to do so.
Although it has a lot advantages, it have disadvantages as well.
- Features like webcam and voice chat that included in Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger is not supported by default.
- It does not have “nudge” by default. (why nudge is important to some people? I dun understand it anyway…)
- File transfer within MSN users is slow due to Microsoft throttled the speed when it detects one of the user is not using their own Windows Live Messenger. It is not Pidgin’s fault, go screw Microsoft for this!
Besides the file transfer speed on MSN network, the rest might be able to overcome by downloading plugins and install it.
Here is some screen shots if you wanted to know how it looks like.
Although it might not look as nice as Windows Live Messenger or Yahoo Messenger, but it is good.
Don’t judge a book by its cover!
Pidgin in Vista
Pidgin in Gnome
Here is the link to the Pidgin website to download it.
Enjoy it
Besides Pidgin, there is actually a lot other instant messenger software like this such as Kopete, Empathy etc.
Most of these software is available to download for free and they are opensource.
Next time I might write about these other software which have the same features like Pidgin.
Before that, enjoy yourself with Pidgin.
🙂