[Sandwich]

Which multi-protocol IM client do you think is best? Least-memory intensive? Most stable? Here to stay? etc.

If anyone has serious reviews comparing all 4 clients, I'd love to read them.

Trillian
GAIM
Miranda
IM2

The biggest points with what I need them for are stability and low memory usage. I've been using the basic/free version of Trillian for a while now, and while it's quite stable, it's a wee bit heavy on the memory.

[Nuke]

i use trillian and i must say it is a resourse whore, but not nearly as bad as running 4 im proggies at once.  its only leeching 8 megs of my system ram at the moment. i havent triedany of the others so thats all i have anything to say about. btw im using the pro version.

[phreak]

trillian is a bit heavy on the memory?

FS2 Open: 300MB
Firefox: 20MB
Winamp: 6MB
Trillian: 5MB

I like trillian since i don't have to install AIM on my PC.

[Taristin]

Trillian is actually using 16 MB on my system

But I don't care, I have a gig. It hardly makes a dent.

[Mongoose]

The only complaint I have with Trillian is that AIM audio chat, although listed as supported for the basic version in the features section of their website, doesn't work.  Other than that, I've found it to be a pretty good program, and I never noticed any performance problems when running it.  I've never tried any of the other programs you listed, although I've heard some good things about Miranda.

[YodaSean]

I've been using GAIM lately.  I used Trillian a long time ago but they stopped updating the free version and I got annoyed with not being able to view profiles

GAIM doesn't have as good of an interface as Trillian, though.  It doesn't really fit in with windows.  But it's still much better than AIM.

[Kamikaze]

I use GAIM and I have no issues with it at all. I'm running it on a Linux box so it might not be applicable though, nothing really slows this box down. My memory usage is usually at 100% and swap will get up to 30% easily but it runs snappy.

[Axem]

I use MirandaIM, it's pretty good in my opinion. I've also used Trillian Basic and GAIM, but I still prefer Miranda. It's very low profile, I'm running it on an ancient 200MHz without any slowdown for other programs.

It's not perfect though, there are a few annoying things with file transfers, globally setting your status, and multiuser chats, but I still love it.

[Setekh]

I haven't been on any IM for months... no time.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Axem
It's very low profile, I'm running it on an ancient 200MHz without any slowdown for other programs.

Hmm.... see, the reason I ask is because Trillian is running on the server computer that sits next to my main machine - it's the comp connected to the ADSL modem, etc. Unfortunately, it's a positively ancient Celeron 500Mhz with 128Mb of RAM, and runs very sloowwlllyy.... even under Win2k.

[Knight Templar]

Trillian is a resource hog. All your base are belong to GAIM.

[Fury]

Having used all the above mentioned except GAIM, I have to say that Trillian 3 Basic is the best. Except maybe GAIM since I haven't used it. Miranda and IM2 both had mixed performance and were buggy, Trillian 0.74 wasn't too good either but Trillian 3 improved things a lot.

My IM usage history:
ICQ, ICQ Lite, Trillian 0.74 basic, Miranda IM, IM2, Trillian 3 basic. And not planning to look for a better IM client, Trillian 3 has been stable and bug free enough for my uses.

[karajorma]

i've been using Trillian Pro for a while now. They changed their licencing system to the most stupid f**king arangement I've ever heard a while back though and I refuse to pay them anything until T4 comes out now.

That said Trillian has got the best logging system I've seen out of all of the clients. When one of the others catches up I might consider swapping.

[n00by]

Been using Miranda IM for quite a while and I LOVE it. It is fully customizable (you can literally build your own IM!), features all protocols you ever need and has absolutely no ads or other annoying thingies.

The only feature I am missing is voice chat, but what is Skype for, then?

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by karajorma
That said Trillian has got the best logging system I've seen out of all of the clients.

Plain text files is the "best logging system"?? What do the others have, straight binary?

[Taristin]

PLain text > graphical crappies.

They're easy to read and search through, and it keeps a log of *everything*.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Sandwich
Plain text files is the "best logging system"?? What do the others have, straight binary?

Trillian pro saves it's logs to plain text files yes but when you choose to look at them from inside TP it parses them and displays them in calendar form allowing you to simply browse for the conversation you were looking for.

Much better than simply having a text file you have to search with in notepad In my opinion but if like Raa you prefer text files you can still read them that way too by simply selecting view as text.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by karajorma


Trillian pro saves it's logs to plain text files yes but when you choose to look at them from inside TP it parses them and displays them in calendar form allowing you to simply browse for the conversation you were looking for.

Much better than simply having a text file you have to search with in notepad In my opinion but if like Raa you prefer text files you can still read them that way too by simply selecting view as text.

Oh yes, I encountered that when I was, uhm, temporarily testing the pro version. Yeah. It was cool.