Universal IM with Gaim

Gaim, the instant messanging client has always been an important part of the graphic internet utilities included with varous distributions of Linux but recently I was supprised to find that it was long ago ported to Windows.Growing weary of Trillians bloated XML interface, AIM's included spyware, and the over populaton of advertisments in Yahoo I decided to try gaim for windows. Select read more to see my review.

The installation of gaim went off without any issue, the installer asked standard questions pertaining to where I wanted the program installed and which IM network I wanted to use. For my install I choose aim, yahoo, and jabber.

After completing the install and adding the networks I wanted to connect to all I needed to do was check "online" and gaim connected to the network I selected.

Sending IM's to contacts works just like in any other and I had no problem sending messages to any and all of my contacts.

File transfer was a slightly difrent story, while it did work, I stumbled upon a bug that crashed gaim. The problem occurs when a buddy sends you a file that already exists and you choose to over write. This causes Gaim to crash in windows.

I concluded that Gaim, while it still had some minor bugs was much faster, much easier to use, and more universal then any other IM client I've used under windows thus far. By supporting AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber, MSN, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise Messenger, and Zephyr I found it to be the most universal IM client.

For more information, or to download your own copy of gaim, goto , http://gaim.sourceforge.net/