Chat Clients

I loved Google Talk. It was rather simple, but that's really what made it. Nothing went wrong. The file transferring was excellent, and it really just worked. Alas and alack, Google talk does not have a version for Macintosh! Yes, you can use it in your web browser, but that really just isn't worth it. It doesn't support any of the cool features that the chat client does, and then you have to keep a web browser open.

Thus began the search. Seeking to sever ties with Windows, I began researching what chat clients there were out there for OSX. I remembered Pidgin, a client I had for my Portable Apps program, but they didn't have an OSX version. To make a long story short, after looking into several dead ends, I came across Adium.

It looked pretty. I downloaded it. I was impressed.

It was open source. It has add-ons. They were cool. I was impressed.

It had more options. They were superb. I was impressed.

I use the feature to auto-resize the window to the number of contacts currently on, and the feature to decrease the opacity of the window so that is is clear. I have a dark background, so it's a clear window with the contact names and messages white. It's pretty cool. I've also downloaded some sound pack add-ons with Star Wars sound effects that makes it cool. Plus the dock icon is now a Darth Vader version of the logo. And the status bar icon is a guy on an elevator.

However, it can't be perfect. Although both Google Talk and Adium support file transfer, there is something that prevents them from actually performing the transfer. I don't know what it is and I hope it will be corrected, because I used that feature. and I liked it. And email clients never like my attachements (and I'm not exceeding the allowed limit or sending .exe files for anything!).

All in all, I've been, you guessed it, impressed with Adium and would recommend it to all you fellow Mac users. It supports several services, and I personally like it.