Trillian rides into the sunset!

Well, on my computer at least. Today I work up, turned on the computer, and realized that although the AIM module connects properly, my buddylist doesn't show up, etc, etc, etc.

So today I'm officially "done" with Trillian unless their mythical new version pops out of nowhere in the next day and a half.

I'll give credit where credit is due: like 2, 3 years ago Trillian was tops. It really was the best thing in IM aggregation: file transfers, buddy icons, video / audio chat -- basically it blew everyone else out of the water, because of the features it had.

But networks evolve. So too should the client software, but not Trillian.

"Hey, let's share photos over Yahoo!"

"Sorry, can't do that."

Then I realized that it's a load of shit and I shouldn't be cramping my style just because Cerulean Studios isn't keeping up.

So I disabled the Yahoo! module in Trillian and logged into Yahoo Messenger.

"Hey, did you get my last MSN message?"

"No?"

Trillian's been sproadically dropping MSN messages for as long as I can remember. The original client never does that. Why should I deal with a client that does? I installed Windows Live Messenger.

That left just ICQ and AIM. But now I've got AIM 6.0 running on my system because Trillian3 flaked out on me, and that just leaves the client running ICQ... a medium I never use but only keep because I might need to find someone from my deep dark past.

Here's the part where a voice in my head goes "CHECK OUT GAIM IT'LL BE AWESOME LOL" even though I should know better by now. Gaim is a minimalist client that supports only shared features across the networks. It's not really an option because I'm a social chatter; I use all those "stupid" features like audio chat, video chat, file transfers, etc. Obviously Gaim aims for a particular set of users that I'm not among. The same with Miranda-IM and the rest of the All-In-One instant messaging suites.

So I've gone full circle: I'm back to running almost all the original clients again. Different UIs, different styles... but for all that, they still work.

tags: trillian, gaim