On my old XP laptop I had been using AIM 5.9 with AIMutation on top of it. I always kinda liked AIMutation even long after any support for it ended.

When I got this Vista laptop I put the same AIM 5.9 and AIMutation on it. But for some reason while the aim.exe process would launch itself on startup, the tray icon wouldn't show up. I set AIM to not only start up when Windows starts but also auto-login. Still was hit or miss.

I figured this was some issue between old-ass AIM and Vista but I had already tried newer AIM once before a few years ago and said screw that. Hence why I'd been using 5.9 + AIMutation the whole time. So I went and investigated non-AOL AIM clients and downloaded Pidgin.

This is pretty sweet actually. The interface is nice and clean, very similar to Apple iChat. I'm no Apple fanboy, but the iChat interface is pretty good. And while I don't really have any other IM accounts to use with Pidgin, I at least don't have to use the crap AOL program. I recommend it highly.

http://www.pidgin.im/

 

yeah, i like pidgin, but i can't seem to get msn to connect at work so i'm still using trillian there.

 

I don't have that problem because my of my company's overly restrictive IT policies.

IM at work is all Octro on my cell phone. h:

 

iChat sucks dick, I use Adium