[MSN aka Windows LIVE Alernatives] Aight, that's it...

Recoil42

...I'm tired of this piece of junk sitting in my tray, serving me ads, and taking 50,000kb of memory doing nothing more than it did two versions ago. I love your style, MSN, you're still the best and cleanest looking of the big three, but my god, you're turning into a pig with every new release.

I really don't like Pidgin. Or Miranda. They vex me to no end, smacking of no-thought-put-into-the-gui oss projects. Miranda is too minimalist, Pidgin is clumsier than a vertigo suffering drunk on Saturday night, and doesn't support webcam.

So, PA... what else is out there?

I'm giving Trillian a try right now, I haven't used it in years, but I'd love to hear what else is out there.

Zoolander

Have you tried the Mess patch? It gets rid of pretty much all the annoying shit, keeping the good stuff. Look for it here. It doesn't do much about the memory usage though.

Silvoculous

Pretty much Trillian. You can apply skins with the Pro version, but to be honest, the default is the best one you'll find, so Basic'll do you.

Dark Shroud

Just use the patch, you won't be happy with the alternatives.

Recoil42

Sigh, Trillian fails at GUI design 101 too. Astra is just as bad. How is this so hard for IM teams to get?

I mean, jesus jackrabbit fucking christ. It's really not that complicated, guys.

Malvient

I've used Trillian Pro with the GuiStyle skin for a while now. the deviantart skin isn't bad either.

used miranda for a while, but eventually it crashed and then kept crashing on startup so I went back to Trillian.

I find Trillian kind've bloated, and I've had problems with file transfers pretty much forever, but I absolutely abhor the windows live/msn messenger client and haven't used it in years. For the most part, Trillian does its job without annoying me too much.

Silvoculous

I actually like Pidgin for its simple yet aesthetic GUI. It's the fact that it can't do half the things more popular IM clients do that bugs me. There's got to be a decent middle ground.

theSquid

What about aMSN? It's ugly as sin, but it's lightweight, doesn't have bloatware, supports webcam and generally tries to look as MSN Messenger-like as possible (but is uglier)

Silvoculous

aMSN doesn't look bad at all if you apply the Clearlooks skin.

Deusfaux

MESS PATCH

MESS PATCH

MESS PATCH

pm me if you want my settings file for the patch

but seriously, how have you been using it for years without the

MESS PATCH

www.mess.be

Recoil42

^ As zoolander said, the mess patch doesn't help the ram and performance bullshit. That's always bugged me far more than the ads have.

Flapke

Miranda IM, seriously. It's very (VERY!) customizable with plugins, not minimalist at all if you don't want it to be and is lightweight (my pimped out version is using 7MB right now). The plugins page is kind of rubbish though, you kinda gotta know what you plugins you want.

Deusfaux

what ram and performance stuff?

mine takes up 2-3 of that of winamp.

squirly

I wish Miranda had screenshots of the themes available on their site.

Zoel

digsby is great if for some reason you run multiple IM networks and need to shave down the number of clients you use. It is a little bloat at this beta phase. Supposedly they are going to go into heavy optimization in the next patch. If for some reason you are a etard and also use facebook/myspace/twitter it's pretty much the im client right now though.

Arrath

Yahoo instant messenger has cross-service support for msn/windows live.

Cyvros

If you've got a Jabber or Google Talk account, you can add an MSN/WL transport so that you can use your MSN/WL account in a Jabber client or Gtalk. Works for me. I haven't so much as had to look at WLM for the past year.

Silvoculous

Zoel wrote: »

digsby is great if for some reason you run multiple IM networks and need to shave down the number of clients you use.

So it sports the same features that Pidgin and Trillian have been touting for years,

*checks out the website*

But looks a hell of a lot better doing it. I'm downloading this even if it can't support webcam, it may be worth it.

EDIT: Yeah it just made me uninstall Trillian.

Narian

Silvoculous wrote: »

aMSN doesn't look bad at all if you apply the Clearlooks skin.

I second aMSN + Clearlooks (Link to the skin itself).

EDIT: I would actually like to rescind my above statement and say that after downloading emesene (thank you focus7), that this is easily the superior MSN IM Client. Probably because it's what aMSN was like before the latest version which totally made the GUI look like shit.

Burtletoy

Flapke wrote: »

Miranda IM, seriously. It's very (VERY!) customizable with plugins, not minimalist at all if you don't want it to be and is lightweight (my pimped out version is using 7MB right now). The plugins page is kind of rubbish though, you kinda gotta know what you plugins you want.

I broke my Miranda IM and no it no longer connects to AIM ever. I don't know what I did, I had it all nice a pretty looking then one day, bam, nothing. Tried clean installs and old versions and new versions and changing the aol.ocsar.whatever the login server name is, but nothing works.

focused7

emesene is another MSN client only. Pretty basic and cleancut.

Dírhael

Silvoculous wrote: »

Zoel wrote: »

digsby is great if for some reason you run multiple IM networks and need to shave down the number of clients you use.

So it sports the same features that Pidgin and Trillian have been touting for years,

*checks out the website*

But looks a hell of a lot better doing it. I'm downloading this even if it can't support webcam, it may be worth it.

EDIT: Yeah it just made me uninstall Trillian.

The amount of memory that client [digsby] hogs is...well, insane. 100MB+ of RAM usage for a IM client? Really...

Silvoculous

Meh, it's not like I'm using that RAM for anything else. And I've plenty to go around.

If RAM is a problem for anybody then I still recommend Pidgin.

Cyvros

Dìrhael wrote: »

Silvoculous wrote: »

Zoel wrote: »

digsby is great if for some reason you run multiple IM networks and need to shave down the number of clients you use.

So it sports the same features that Pidgin and Trillian have been touting for years,

*checks out the website*

But looks a hell of a lot better doing it. I'm downloading this even if it can't support webcam, it may be worth it.

EDIT: Yeah it just made me uninstall Trillian.

The amount of memory that client [digsby] hogs is...well, insane. 100MB+ of RAM usage for a IM client? Really...

Could be because of the integrated social networking features. I think it's got support for MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and some other place. Tried Digsby once and couldn't get into it, partially because of my dislike for software that uses a non-native UI and allows you to skin it pink.

squirly

Okay, emesene is a new must install for me when on Linux.

Silvoculous

emesene looks almost exactly like Pidgin.

If you're using Linux then Kopete is the way to go. It supports damn near everything and is customizable in the vein of Adium.

Dírhael

Silvoculous wrote: »

Meh, it's not like I'm using that RAM for anything else. And I've plenty to go around.

If RAM is a problem for anybody then I still recommend Pidgin.

RAM usage isn't a problem as such, but I can't really see myself using it when even the official client uses less than half of that (or Miranda that also supports just about every IM network under the sun, and does so while using almost 10 times less memory). If it really took advantage of all the resources it takes up then it would be a different story, but even with the amount of RAM is consumes it still feels sluggish even when compared to "beasts" like Trillian and ICQ.

focused7

Silvoculous wrote: »

emesene looks almost exactly like Pidgin.

If you're using Linux then Kopete is the way to go. It supports damn near everything and is customizable in the vein of Adium.

Pidgin just annoys me because it still doesn't support MSNPV14.

squirly

Silvoculous wrote: »

emesene looks almost exactly like Pidgin.

If you're using Linux then Kopete is the way to go. It supports damn near everything and is customizable in the vein of Adium.

Yeah, except it has some notable differences like the log in part, changing status, search box, etc.

These are huge things Pidgin is missing or are accessed in some retarded fashion.

bowen

*shrug* I liked the original AIM before it became all fucktarded, and that's why I use pidgin/GAIM. I don't know why people don't like the GUI, is it just not flamboyant enough for you? Maybe you'd prefer some bright pastel colors all over your window. I don't, that's why I like minimalistic IM clients. Although, Googletalk is looking pleasing lately (I think they have AIM and working on MSN support now).

Cyvros

bowen wrote: »

*shrug* I liked the original AIM before it became all fucktarded, and that's why I use pidgin/GAIM. I don't know why people don't like the GUI, is it just not flamboyant enough for you? Maybe you'd prefer some bright pastel colors all over your window. I don't, that's why I like minimalistic IM clients. Although, Googletalk is looking pleasing lately (I think they have AIM and working on MSN support now).

Actually, that depends which of the four versions of Google Talk you use - there's Gmail chat (only one with AIM at the moment), the original desktop client (last updated last January), the web gadget and the new WebKit-based desktop client. The web gadget and the new desktop client are exactly the same now and, along with Gmail chat, have invisibility. Very minimalist, too. I know what you mean about the minimalist UI, too.

You can get AIM and MSN working at the moment, though, because Gtalk just uses Jabber. If you add the aim.jaim.at and msn.jaim.at transports, it'll work fine.

theSquid

I prefer the Linux console 'talk' application, for the awesomeness of watching someone actually TYPE their message.

Cyvros

theSquid wrote: »

I prefer the Linux console 'talk' application, for the awesomeness of watching someone actually TYPE their message.

I'm disappointed by the fact that I can't find an updated version with a GUI. Or even the Windows version, which I know for a fact exists. Is there a site which hosts talk and/or its source (it's cross-platform, so I assume there's a decent chance it's FOSS)?