Instant Messaging with Gaim
I've been using Miranda since the summer but over the past month or maybe even 2, I have had problems sending MSN messages. They would get delayed until either I sent a message to another contact or waited 12 to 24 hours later. This seems to be a known issue on the support forums with no solution so I finally gave up on it today based on frustration.
At first I thought I would go back to individual clients but the install of MSN 6 quickly changed that. If I can't control the names of my contacts, I can't use it.
What is this? It's recommended that I use MSN as a homepage?
Had to try something else. Global didn't look very good and I have heard only positive results from Gaim so there wasn't much of a debate.
Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM (Oscar and TOC protocols), ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr networks.
I really like Miranda (when it was working) so changing was a last resort but things have been working out well with Gaim. I should wait a week before reviewing it but I'll give some quick first reactions.
- MSN seems to work much better
- If I hover my mouse over a contact, a little yellow annoying box shows up. I have yet to find a way to turn this off.
- How did I ever live without tabs. Amazing.
- You can be online with multiple accounts under the same protocol. ei: Logged in as 2 Jabber users at the same time.
- Displays how long a contact has been logged in or been idle for.
- Contact list was auto imported from MSN and ICQ. ICQ even seemed to remember most of my alias names
- I miss being able to turn on and off "Show Offline Users" on a per group basis.
Gaim was a simple install and easy to setup with fewer options and plugins then miranda required. The only problem I ran into was with version 0.75 and had to use 0.74 to connect to Jabber using SSL.
Comments
Neil Turner - January 25, 2004 7:02 am
Trillian Pro 2.01 is still the best IM client that I have tried, but Miranda isn't bad. Have you tried using the MSN Gateway plugin with Miranda? It fixed some issues with MSN that I was having.
I've never got Gaim to work properly in Windows and it seemed to crash a lot so I gave up on it. Miranda also seems to more customisable.
Brad Pineau - January 25, 2004 1:38 pm
Yah,.. I was having the same problems with MSN. But I have yet to switch!
Stephen DesRoches - February 3, 2004 11:14 pm
A few more points to add to my small review.
<ul><li>You can't tell when somebody is trying to start a file transfer. It's fine if Gaim doesn't support it because it never worked in Miranda for me but it's weird when I have a contact asking me why I'm not accepting it when I don't know what they are talking about.</li><li>The chat window renders html code. This prevents me from sending code examples to anybody. It wouldn't be as bad if all IM clients acted the same but if when only Gaim does it, it gets really confusing when it looks fine on the other end.</li><li>Not having ctrl+c is frustrating and I have yet to break the habbit and start using the mouse to copy text.</li></ul>
Stephen Skelly - March 13, 2004 4:01 pm
how do you talk threw a microphone online threw gaim measgging
jwinter - June 27, 2005 4:05 pm
I think one of the biggest hassles with instant messaging is that it’s tied to the computer. If I’m away from the computer, like watching tv, I may miss an important IM. I can leave the speakers on the PC really loud, but then I’m always jumping up and running back to the PC to read an incoming IM in case it’s important. Most of the time it’s not. I can subscribe to a service with my cell phone—but that costs money. So here is (I think) the perfect solution, and a good GAIM plug-in that’s not too much work.
I just installed a Pluto Home system (plutohome.com). It’s a free, open source smarthome and media server. You put Bluetooth dongles on all the pc’s in your house, and then when you enter a room your Symbian Bluetooth phone turns into a remote control for everything in that room. It already tracks your movement—if you start listening to music in 1 room, your music will follow you as you move with your phone to another room. And it already sends messages to the phone based on events. For example, when the song changes, the cover art shown on my phone changes to show me what’s playing.
So that got me thinking? Why not make a GAIM plugin for pluto so that whenever I get an IM, I see it on my Bluetooth phone? That way I can either type a reply on the phone, or go back to the computer if I want to use the keyboard, or ignore it if it’s not important. And I’m not having to run back and forth to the computer to check IM. And it’s free since it uses Bluetooth! Plus, I think it’s such a real convenience it would be a great way to get people to switch to GAIM.
I talked to the programmers at Pluto and they said it would be really easy since their stuff is already written in small modules and plugins. However, since we’re all open source, we could also just take whatever pieces were useful and do something completely new using the same concept.
Many of the other GAIM projects listed are either specific for only some users (like Apple iChat), or would only be used by geeks (like the Perl interpreter). But not having to run back and forth to the computer is something everybody wants (imho). I don’t see how to recommend a new idea for GAIM, so I’ll just try the forums and hope somebody else likes it too.