Messengers - ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, AOL

Many people ask what software to use to chat with their friends. My advice is to get Miranda for Windows and Kopete or Gaim for Linux.

Gaim screenshot gaim.sourceforge.net



















Kopete screenshot kopete.kde.org



















Miranda

















pros:
- Works very fast
- Supports ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo! Messenger and other chat protocols. This means that you can chat with your friends from different networks without need to install different software clients
- Faster network response
- Loads faster and take up less memory.

cons:
- some of advanced extras are not supported - such as games and others.
- problems with cyrillic encodings.

Privacy: You can block unwanted people from chatting with you or hide yourself from others.

Transfer files: You can transfer photos, pictures and other files with your friends.

Installation:
Download Miranda IM from here: www.miranda-im.org and proceed with the installation.
Then choose your screenname for example: 1234567890. Miranda will automatically populate the list of your friends and let you chat with them.

Trillian:
MSN+Yahoo+AIM+ICQ+RC+Googletalk in one
www.trillian.cc

Pidgin:
http://pidgin.im



Quiet Internet Pager

www.qip.ru/downloads.html
Try using this messenger - it's very fast, quiet and reliable. Has tabbed interface for managing multiple conversations instead of being cluttered with lots of conversation windows.

Alternatives:
For those who has only web interface here are two addresses of web based chat messengers. They don't require to have something installed on your machine. Just type your username and password and you are in.

Web based:

go.icq.com


AJAX based Meebo

AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, Jabber, GTalk, MSN

www.meebo.com

It is worth trying.