Pidgin or Trillian: Which one do you use?

By TechWizard  

For the past many months I have been toying with two different instant messenger tools to test out their differences. As for myself, I have accounts with Yahoo, AOL Instant Messenger, MSN, and ICQ. The convenience of using Pidgin or Trillian will gather all information together into one simple program. There is no need to opening up every instant messenger, instead I only have to open up just one which brings up all of my contacts for each account.

For example when a new user begins an account on Trillian or Pidgin they are presented with a dialog box and asked what account they wish to add. In this example, the user would choose Yahoo. A new dialog box appears which the user then enters their Yahoo account name and password. The tool then begins to see all of the contacts (or buddies) on their list. The user can then follow this same procedure for AOL instant messenger, MSN, ICQ and other accounts which they have.

When the user has completed adding all of their accounts, they can then set all of the preferences of the program or look at the window of the buddy list. The buddy list is long, narrow, and easy to move around. Pidgin and Trillian set up icons in the status bar where your volume control is. To open the buddy window, double click the icon. To close, click the X in the top right corner.

To send someone a message, you need to double click the person’s name, a second small window will appear. You then type a message, press enter or click the “Enter” button then your instant message will then be sent to them. In some cases, your message may not be received. For example, your message will not be read if the intended person is offline, invisible, or if the person is set to away and does not want to speak with anyone.

Two more very important things to note with these instant message tools. Trillian has a basic application version and a paid version. As for Pidgin, it is a free application. The second issue I noticed regarding Pidgin is the application moves a lot faster than Trillian when running.

In essence, it is user preference for what application is used. The best thing I suggest is to try them both out and see which one is liked over the other. Here are the URLs to both web sites to download the free software and learn more about them.

For Pidgin: http://www.pidgin.im

For Trillian: http://www.ceruleanstudios.com


12 Comments

  1. Posted 06/05/2009 at 8:02 pm | Permalink

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  2. Posted 06/09/2009 at 6:31 pm | Permalink

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  3. Posted 07/16/2009 at 1:09 pm | Permalink

    I am very interested in this topic.

  4. techwizard
    Posted 07/26/2009 at 3:17 pm | Permalink

    To be honest, I’m still learning Pidgin. I did discover however that Pidgin in comparison to Trillian had a few advantages. For starters, the software did not lag because it does not have this fancy interface like Trillian yet it is still quite user friendly. Second, the updating feature was different in that when it did update it was quite timely and did it very fast in comparison to Trillian. The third issue I noticed was even though there weren’t all the bells and whistles you could barely tell it was running in your system. For example, when a user boots Pidgin then logs in that’s it they are online and it’s a done deal. The system has no problem running it.

    Another large difference between Trillian and Pidgin is there is a fee users will be charged to use Trillian Pro. I personally have not used Trillian Pro so cannot comment whether it is worth the price. As a final thought, Microsoft has been known to cause headaches for Trillian users when it comes to updates because Microsoft does not like sharing code.

    Hope this helps!

    TW

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