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Instant Messaging 101: Any tips?

Adium is alright, but iChat is more pleasing. Think of iChat as the Mac version of AOL AIM, it might not be up to speed with its PC counterpart, but damn does it look and feel good.

Adium sounds like your best bet for what you need though, you get all the necessary clients any of your buddies might be on all in one little program. Nuff said.
 
Having used iChat and Adium I do have to say I prefer iChat. Sadly however I know ONE other person with an AIM/iChat account so unless I chat to him I use Adium. It seems most people over here are on MSN.
 
yellow said:
Oh no.. please say it isn't so. Don't do it BV! I cannot imagine you conversing with someone who responds with:

"Wut r u doin?"
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IM'ing with the wrong people is the electronic version of root canal ... but chatting with interesting people who are adept at contributing to an interactive conversation, and actually know how to spell words completely, can have a rewarding aspect to it.

I really could not envision BV wasting her time because she does not appear to be a woman who suffers fools easily. It must be remembered that when it comes to the world of instant messaging, fools are truly a growth industry.
 
I fully realize this, which is why I found it so amusing to think of BV getting involved with one of my most despised forms of "communication".

I truly believe that IMing is the biggest downfall of modern English in American society. Sheer sloth and idiocy. I guess I got all the IMing out of my system year ago. :)
 
I think IMs are a great invention, especially if you're abroad a lot and have friends all over the world. It's much easier to keep in touch than email or phone.
That being said I use both Adium and iChat. iChat because I love the video and voice chat, for the above mentioned reason. There is nothing nicer than seeing your family and friends when you are a couple thousand miles away...
and Adium because there are just so many people using different services it's nuts.
 
Thanks all -- if I fall in with the wrong crowd, then I'll know who to blame. :D

Better do some work now and revert to an older form of communication: ISDN.
 
Blue Velvet said:
But you don't need to have a hotmail account do you? I'd rather not have one. Got a few standard email addresses with my ISP that I use and can add another if necessary.
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no u don't need one..in that case u gotta go register at the .net site...
 
Being in H/S instant messaging is a number one way of communication. Once you remove the kids that type nothing more that "whats up" nutting much, it can be a great tool, and a good way to transfer files.

Interms of App. I still cant find a satisfying one.

iChat-Bulky, not functional, and a b it difficult to use.

Adium-Decent, takes forever to configure in a usable way, unreliable/

Aim-Excellent until version 4.7 crashed ever 20 seconds, so im back to adium, configurded as close to aim with some things that are better, but aim is the simplest, right to the point. I wish i could go back to a previous version but dont know where to find one.

Aim has crashed constantly on 4 macs running tiger
 
Blue Velvet said:
Well. It's done and is now working. Thanks to all who've helped me. :) ;)
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In celebration:

GLAD U GOT IT UP AND RUNNG!!!! OMG LOL WHO R U CHATNG WIT CURENTLY?????!?! LOL I B 3DESIGNUK IS A FEIND VIA ICHAT1!!!1!11 WTF

Cheers!

:)
 
glad you got it up and running BV :D

you will be addicted in no time.... or is that only me? well whatever :eek:
 
yellow said:
In celebration:

GLAD U GOT IT UP AND RUNNG!!!! OMG LOL WHO R U CHATNG WIT CURENTLY?????!?! LOL I B 3DESIGNUK IS A FEIND VIA ICHAT1!!!1!11 WTF

Cheers!

:)
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OMG!111!!! HTF did u kno? LOL

But seriously, am not going to use that often and certainly am not going to make my account widely known. Just dipping my toe in...
 
Everyone seems to like Adium. I guess Apple really can't make iChat 'better' or they face anti-trust monopolistic lawsuits. That is why Microsoft's Windows Media Player sucks so much, but they still got sued. :p
 
Lacero said:
Everyone seems to like Adium. I guess Apple really can't make iChat 'better' or they face anti-trust monopolistic lawsuits. That is why Microsoft's Windows Media Player sucks so much, but they still got sued. :p
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there is actually plenty of things that apple can do to make iChat better, but they have not.

such as tabbed chatting. seriously i dont't need more than one chat window open when i am talking to people online, just let me tab through them as they respond and so forth.

and why does it have to take up so much space? why can't it auto resize when people log in and off?

i dont need it to connect to all the other clients, although it would be nice if it did.

they could also offer a bit more customizablilty of the buddy window as well as the conversation itself.
 
I use Adium as my main IM app.
Love the complete ability to customise it...
Love the fact that it is a stable multi client app...

I do love iChat though - and it is a shame that it doesn't link into MSN but only AIM. AIM seems to be big in the States, but not elsewhere. The video / audio quality of chat though in iChat I have found to be significantly superior to any other option I have tried... Yahoo Messenger, Mercury Messenger etc.

I'd love iChat to be able to access MSN, which seems to be the new default IM here in Aust. Years ago it seems everyone was on ICQ, but since Win XP most seem to use MSN Messenger.
 
CubaTBird said:
fire anyone?

http://fire.sourceforge.net/
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I was going to say, I'm surprised that no one had mentioned Fire yet. I personally like it better than Adium, though that may be purely of familiarity and convenience. I have iChat open occasionally with different accounts (and for rendezvous...err...bonjour... and drop to the "official" clients in the rare instance that something doesn't work correctly.

//edit -- bonjour/rendezvous does work in Fire...

That being said, it does have its faults, IRC is not recommended on it, nor have I found a way to change the smiley set. (This, however, could be sheer ignorance.)
 
I really dislike the Adium interface - I only have it for the one person I like to chat with who only has MSN. iChat is my absolute favourite, great interface, and audio and video chatting.
 
shadow95 said:
I was going to say, I'm surprised that no one had mentioned Fire yet. I personally like it better than Adium, though that may be purely of familiarity and convenience. I have iChat open occasionally with different accounts (and for rendezvous...err...bonjour... and drop to the "official" clients in the rare instance that something doesn't work correctly.

//edit -- bonjour/rendezvous does work in Fire...

That being said, it does have its faults, IRC is not recommended on it, nor have I found a way to change the smiley set. (This, however, could be sheer ignorance.)
Click to expand...

i've had some connection issues with Fire and i tried it with a few versions and still had that same problem..thats why i hate Fire so much...
 
proteus is the bestest. i use it because i'm not l33t enough to use AIM...being an ex-PC user, i've got an MSN addy with all my friends on, so i cant really expect them to change.
 
dragonball05 said:
if i understand correctly, adium does not support video nor audio!!!
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Ah, but ask yourself this. Do I really really want people I hardly know to hear and see me?
 
Blue Velvet said:
Ah, but ask yourself this. Do I really really want people I hardly know to hear and see me?
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Finally, an easy question ... I would not want that. The appealing aspect of IM exchanges is the anonymity that is retained while engaging in it occasionally.
 
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