Hi, this is the first article of the quick review series. This is a serie of quick reviews about products and softwares. I don’t have connection with any company and all of the opinions that I will write here will be a personal opinion.

In this first article, I will review some instant messengers of mac os x platform. Here is the list:

1. Skype (website)

Skype is my preferred communication tool. I use it everyday and it can be used as an instant messenger and to make calls from skype to skype, from skype to landlines via skypeout and from landline to skype via skype in.

In my opinion, skype has better video and voice support than all other instant messengers.

Here is a screenshot of skype (this picture is from skype website):

2. Adium (website)

“Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more”. This piece of text was taken from the Adium website and describes exactly the adium funcionalities.

In general, it is a nice tool to avoid using one different software for each communication tool. It is fast, light, and easy to use, but, in my opinion, has an important problem: the lack of voice and video support.

Here is a screenshot of adium (this picture is from adium website):

3. Trillian (website)

This is a software that is still in alpha version, so there is a lack of many important features. However, I’ve been using it daily, and it has a great interface, it is very easy to use. I strongly recommend to keep an eye on this one. It is not totally ready for daily use yet, but looks promising.

Here is a screenshot of trillian (this picture is from trillian website):

4. Microsoft Messenger (website)

This is the famous microsoft messenger. In its version for mac, the software is in general not good. Tehe is lack of audio and video support, custom emoticons and many features that we have seen in Windoes for a long time. It looks like microsoft works in this version with extremely low priority.

The good news is they recently released a beta version that includes audio and video calls. Click here to download.

Here is a screenshot of Messenger 8 beta (this picture is from microsoft website):

Verdict

In my opinion, the best mac instant messenger for mac is Skype, but if you want to use other IMs protocols, like msn, jabber, icq, aol, etc, I recommend to use Trillian which is not so good yet, but looks promising.

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