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So what's so good about Adium anyway?

daneoni

daneoni

macrumors G5
Original poster
Mar 24, 2006
12,039
1,959
Im getting tired of the random disconnections of both MSN and Yahoo messengers and i'm now tempted to try something else. I tried Adium back on 04 but found it weird to use and didn't offer enough privacy options.

I like my Yahoo and MSN contacts to be private from each other i.e. set away, offline, invincibility for individual accounts, blocking (some stalkers and bots), file transfers. Hence the reason i have both clients

Strong connections and non sluggish performance is now a must

Webcam support would be great but not absolute

Any of you guys using Adium, if so, how is it?

Wonder why iChat doesn't offer Hotmail and Yahoo options...seems like a no brainer to me.
 
i use adium all day, 5 days a week, and i have never had connection issues or any other problems. i love it!

it works for me because i've got all 3 of my screennames signed on at the same time in the same window and i can still have my away messages...they even have the "invisible" option i loved so much back in my ICQ days!

i only wish my non-adium friends could see my custom smilies! :p
 
Adium is probably my favorite mac only app. I use it primarily for AIM but it seems to work well with yahoo on the rare occasion that I need to use it.

File transfers seem to be much improved with the newest version. You can individually change the status and properties for each account. There still isn't any webcam support though.

It doesn't seem to be sluggish at all and I've found that it's better at holding a connection then iChat.

I prefer adium to iChat primarily because it's look can be customized (I have my contact list taking up a very small part of my screen) and because it seems to handle chat logs very well.
 
I quite like Adium. Its customization options are varied, it's the only chat client I've seen that handles Google Talk (the PC doesn't even have a program that handles GTalk, other than GTalk itself), it allows me to set seperate away levels for my different screennames, it's got handy visual cues for people going on/offline, and it's pleasantly minimal.
 
Just installed it and overall it seems useable. Dunno why it has to install Growl though. Will run it for a week and see how it goes. In the meantime, trying to uninstall Growl.....
 
I used Adium as something different to iChat and I fell in love with it. Once I put the Adiumy Marvin icon in my dock I was sold. I love the integration w/ Google Chat, and I only have AIM since that was all that was around when I started using the Internet.

So for me, I use Adium because of it's simplicity and good looks. I don't care about A/V chats right now, but maybe when we have children who want to see grandparents I'll switch back to iChat. Until then, though, it's Adium for me.
 
if i could use iChat, I would, but Adium works for me. MSN crashes way too often for me, and the user interface is, IMO, shocking.
 
• One program for the three networks I use.

• Tabbed chats.

• Customisable UI, which means I can adjust it to take up very little screen space.

• Lets me see and also disable custom emoticons.

• Chat logs are easy to search.

• I can change the display names of the gimmers who insist on having huge names.

• Lots of handy plugin schemes and icon sets.

• Has never crashed on me. I previously used Fire and liked it a lot, but it was too unstable.

• The contact list will snap to the window side.

Generally, I find it to be very useful. I don't much care about voice/video chat - I have Skype for that.

The file transfers being slow are a pain but I don't send huge files over MSN anyway - I use my web server. For sending the odd photo it is fine enough.
 
It is wonderful for all the reasons people mentioned above. It is extraordinarily customizable, and is very pretty. It works well, and never disconnects me.

For audio/video chats, I always use Skype, so the lack of audio/video in Adium doesn't bother me. Skype is way better than any of the other IM services for those purposes.
 
quigleybc said:
but no iSight support and retardedly slow file transfers make it totally useless for me.....
Click to expand...

When was the last time you used the program? Since they updated to 1.0 my file transfers have gone as quickly as my connection will allow, at least over the AIM network. iSight is pretty minor for me, since I use Skype for my video chat.

Gaim, Trillian, PSI and other Jabber IM clients.
Click to expand...

Eh, I Googled for clients that would support GTalk specifically, and nothing came up, which peeved me. I'll look into Gaim's Jabber support again, since I'm already running that.
 
gloss said:
Eh, I Googled for clients that would support GTalk specifically, and nothing came up, which peeved me. I'll look into Gaim's Jabber support again, since I'm already running that.
Click to expand...

Google's own Help pages for GTalk explain exactly how to set up GTalk in GAIM and all the other clients.
 
I love adium. Being able to talk to all my friends on different IM networks all at once with one program is amazing! Allotriophagy pretty much hit the nail on the head as far os good features go.
 
I don't like how you can't see the second line of a username in MSN.

ie
Andrew
Gone to work

or whatever.. it just shows up as Andrew. other than that I love it.
 
ezzie1029 said:
i use adium all day, 5 days a week, and i have never had connection issues or any other problems. i love it!

it works for me because i've got all 3 of my screennames signed on at the same time in the same window and i can still have my away messages...they even have the "invisible" option i loved so much back in my ICQ days!

i only wish my non-adium friends could see my custom smilies! :p
Click to expand...
Do people even use ICQ any more?
 
I don't have any contacts on anything other than msn messenger, but the file transfers are dog slow. Other than that it's a good programme
 
Dunepilot said:
I don't have any contacts on anything other than msn messenger, but the file transfers are dog slow.
Click to expand...
I think if Adium (libgaim) can't establish a regular connection it uses a slower but more reliable method (for MSN only). I've had slow transfers over MSN too.

I love Adium because of the great customizable UI, something I really miss when I have to use anything else, especially in Windows (OMG, do Windows developers not know anything about interface design?!). I love the soundsets and message styles and status icons and everything else available to customize. Some users have made some really great stuff.

Also it has little touches that I really enjoy that I haven't seen in any other IM software, like "Last seen online" or "Online since" in the tooltips, those are really helpful.

Oh, and the Dock icon too, provides some nice useful visual feedback.

If you haven't used Adium in a while give it a try. The 1.0 version is a huge huge huge step up from all the others.
 
quigleybc said:
the only thing I find appealing about Adium is that you can sit and tinker with the way it looks....:rolleyes:
Click to expand...
I disagree, even if the customization is part of what I love about Adium. Otherwise, Allotriophagy pretty much got all the points I would have mentioned. :eek:

Allotriophagy said:
• One program for the three [two] networks I use.

• Tabbed chats.

• Customisable UI, which means I can adjust it to take up very little screen space.

• Chat logs are easy to search.

• I can change the display names of the gimmers who insist on having huge names.

• The contact list will snap to the window side.

Generally, I find it to be very useful. I don't much care about voice/video chat - I have Skype for that.
Click to expand...
And yes, I definitely prefer Skype to iChat. :D
 
daneoni said:
Just installed it and overall it seems useable. Dunno why it has to install Growl though. Will run it for a week and see how it goes. In the meantime, trying to uninstall Growl.....
Click to expand...

The default notifications set uses Growl for visual notifications. This can be easily changed via the Events Preferences.

When Growl is first used by Adium or any other application which bundles the Growl installer, you're prompted to install it. You can certainly tell it 'no' if you want to, and there's an option "Don't ask me again".
 
Reading through this thread I've learnt that Adium supports a multitude of different chat clients. But can I use it to chat to my brother when I'm using a .Mac account and he uses MSN? Or do I have to have a MSN account to chat with another MSN user?
 
welshandrew said:
Reading through this thread I've learnt that Adium supports a multitude of different chat clients. But can I use it to chat to my brother when I'm using a .Mac account and he uses MSN? Or do I have to have a MSN account to chat with another MSN user?
Click to expand...

You must use an MSN account to chat with an MSN user.
 
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