TheOneCubed

Users of OS X know of the very famous iChat instant messenging client that comes preinstalled on any Apple computer. It is a fairly solid chat client including features for video and audio chat. The one thing iChat doesn’t have (by default) are some of the features I really wanted.

Jason’s Chat Client Features:

• tabbed message window
• multiple account/screenname management
• minimal design
• ease of use

That’s when I stumbled across Adium X, then in its 0.40 life cycle. Adium is currently up to 0.89.1 and they are fast closing in on the much-anticipated 1.0 release of their software. Now some of you may consider using anything pre 1.0 release as unsafe. Adium is very stable software for chatting that in my opinion works much better than iChat. Now, it might mess something up every now and again but all in all, a very stable chat client.

Adium also has a host of modifications or Xtras as they are called that can be used to custom tailor Adium to suite your personal tastes. These vary for contact list (buddy list) layout, message styles, sounds, notifications, dock icons, etc. All of which can be updated via Adium Preferences with no need for other applications.

Now surely with all my lauded praise, Adium must have some faults, and it does. Adium can’t handle file transfers as well as other AIM based clients. This is due in large part to a user’s firewall/router settings as well as the open source framework, libgaim, that Adium is based off. Adium also has no integrated support for audio or video chat. Thus if you are a fan of your iSight - you’ll still need to use iChat.