Playing with the Native IM Clients
It’s been a very long time since I’ve used the “official” IM clients for the various IM networks. Partially because I haven’t run Windows as my main OS for quite some time, and partially because applications like Gaim and Adium make it possible for me to be logged into all these networks using a single client (and Gaim is multi-platform to boot). But in order to do the testing I did for Doin’ the IM Time Warp, I decided I should try it with the official clients.
One thing I noticed, without exception, is that all of them were bloated. They contained all these features and buttons that, quite frankly, I could give a rats ass about. They’re adding features to keep up with each other, but nothing really innovative in any of the clients. Well, except for the AIM Phoneline stuff I “can’t” see.
Bottom line is I just want a simple, clean interface without all the clutter. And I don’t want to have to run so many damned IM clients, either. It’s bad enough I have to run Adium in addition to Skype and Gizmo.
