An Alternative to iChat

The interface to iChat (especially versions before Leopard) can be clunky, and sometimes you want to use chat services other than the few supported by iChat.  Luckily, there are other good alternatives.  One of my favorites has always been Adium.

Adium is a free client for OS X that supports AIM, Jabber, and Bonjour (but not Google Talk).  In addition to those, it also supports MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, MySpace IM, Gadu-Gadu, Novell Groupwise, QQ, and Lotus Sametime.

Adium is easy to use, and also features extensive documentation and support on their website in case you run into any trouble setting it up or using it.

Some of my favorite features on Adium include the many choices in styles, so you can customize the look to suit your tastes, the ability to combine your buddy lists from several different messaging services into one window, and a huge amount of customizable plug-ins and addons to make your chatting experience exactly what you want it to be.

In fact, there’s only one real problem I’ve constantly had with Adium.  The ability to transfer files to buddies has improved over the past couple years, but still only works for me sporadically at best.  As someone who shares photos with friends and family frequently, this makes my chatting life pretty difficult.   Because this feature is important to me, and constantly used, I tend to stick with iChat where image transfers have always been flawless despite the many great appeals of Adium.