Alternative to Windows Live Messenger

Skeeter · 6 Apr 2011 at 15:10

WL Messenger refuses to work properly on my work PC so I want to use something else, but its been years since I used an alternative. Whats a good alternative for just WL Messenger?

HeX · 6 Apr 2011 at 15:11

aMSN is what I use, since Live Messenger went mental.

http://www.amsn-project.net/

tntcoder · 6 Apr 2011 at 15:25

Pidgin is where it's at

Deleted member 77746 · 6 Apr 2011 at 15:40

tntcoder said:
Pidgin is where it's at

Engram · 6 Apr 2011 at 15:49

I use this:

http://www.miranda-im.org/

I found it a little more polished than Pidgin.

Fillado · 6 Apr 2011 at 15:55

tntcoder said:
Pidgin is where it's at

pooley · 6 Apr 2011 at 16:09

Another vote for Pidgin.

opethdisciple · 6 Apr 2011 at 16:12

tntcoder said:
Pidgin is where it's at

Muzza1875 · 6 Apr 2011 at 17:03

Skype is good for Instant messaging although it is supposed to be used for making calls.

DJDaz · 6 Apr 2011 at 17:05

Another Pidgin user here.

yashiro · 6 Apr 2011 at 18:51

Trillian is better than Pidgin.

Dewotter · 6 Apr 2011 at 19:01

It's my understanding that Pidgin doesn't store your password locally in an encrypted format. Reason enough not to use it.

Greenlizard0 · 7 Apr 2011 at 11:03

HeX said:
aMSN is what I use, since Live Messenger went mental.

http://www.amsn-project.net/

Heard of and tried the other two in here but not this one.

What's the webcam support like? Can you also add/delete contacts on this or do you still need a normal msn client installed?

Fonz-Valo · 7 Apr 2011 at 11:23

I use emesene, it's a basic straight to the point msn/live client, also the webcam support has been great for me so far

http://www.emesene.org/

Psypher5 · 7 Apr 2011 at 11:30

digsby

SiriusB · 7 Apr 2011 at 15:05

Trillian. Used all the others in the past and much prefer the look, polish and performance of Trillian.

manic_man · 7 Apr 2011 at 16:10

Happy user of Trillian here.

After the latest update to Live made it more bloated than a blue whale that has eaten too much plankton, and after discovering all the kids these days use Facebook chat anyway I tried a couple of cross IM clients. Started with Pidgin, but its Facebook plugin was flaky at best, then tried a few standalones but eventually settled with Trillian, it's rock solid, well polished and doesn't seem to hog your system too much.

SiriusB · 7 Apr 2011 at 16:29

FB Chat is still ropey, even on Trillian. But you can blame FB for their lousy protocol. Luckily not too many people chat to me soley on FB Chat.

Fillado · 7 Apr 2011 at 17:00

RKO said:
It's my understanding that Pidgin doesn't store your password locally in an encrypted format. Reason enough not to use it.

I thought it was utterly trivial (and so pointless to encrypt) to reveal a stored WLM password?

tntcoder · 7 Apr 2011 at 19:07

Fillado said:
I thought it was utterly trivial (and so pointless to encrypt) to reveal a stored WLM password?

Correct, the MSN protocol requires that you have the password in plaintext in order to authenticate properly. So even if you put in the effort to secure it, a tool could trivially be made to recover it.