Adium

I don't know why I waited so long to use try out Adium. I always get crap from my buddies that I am not on Yahoo! or MSN, I'm always on AIM because my preferred instant messenger is iChat. iChat, because it just fits in. I don't use the others often because I hate switching windows so often. In addition to whatever I'm doing at the time, there would be three (3) additional apps open and whatever children they'd produce.

I was watching the season finale of "One Tree Hill" and noticed Payton, played by that blonde female from "TRL" on MTV, was using Adium. I decided to give it a try. Two weeks later here I am. I don't have to have yahoo open, or MSN Messenger, or even iChat for that matter, just Adium.

I am losing some of the benefits of using the individual apps and I am gaining some minor benefits, mostly aesthetic. Some features from the PC version of the messengers were left out of the Mac version. For instance I haven't seen the option to initiate video chat for any of the messengers it supports. I did notice that you can make requests to view the cams of others.

Other benefits include tabbed messaging. This is a feature I've wanted since my AIM for PC days. Back then you would need Powertools now I guess it's called IM Frame. It also supports themes although I'm not sure why the buddy list styles and the message window styles are separate from each other.

In all I am enjoying the use of Adium much.