Best messenger service to combine MSN/AOL in to one?

I recently purchased a Mac Mini and now do the majority of my surfing on it and just leave the pc upstairs for picture editing etc.

I use MSN and AIM but would like to not have two seperate apps running at once to talk to people. What is the best one out there that will let me combine my contacts from both of these into one?

Thanks for the help

I use I Chat and it works fine!!!

Ah cool, so that lets me use my MSN contacts too then? I did a search on here under iChat and it only mentioned AIM so I wasn't sure.

Thanks

IChat does AIM and .Mac which is Apples chat. There are several Free applications that allow you to run all of the major Chat services at the same time. My favorite overall is Adium but there is also Fire that works great too. They will do AIM, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo and others.

There is another that I like called Proteus but it's a Pay program. It's farily cheap though, but try Adium and Fire first since they are free.

How do I get all my contacts to show using Adium? I just installed it and it has only come up with 1 contact out of about 15 for MSN and none for AIM?!

Click on 'View' and then select 'Show Offline Contacts'.

Right now I use Proteus, but I hear that the latest beta of Adium is finally doing things right.. so Im pretty excited to try it out when it becomes stable.

I used Adium, then used Proteus and I'm back to Adium again. Proteus was good but a bit plain, Adium doesn't do much well but it (can) look **** cool.

I gotta say I've found adium the best IM client I've used ... for me its been stable customisble and pretty.

They have just released v.8rc1 (a Release Candidate) and I've found it stable enough to run as I would a full release

Check the Full Release here : http://www.adiumx.com

and

Check out the beta here : http://www.adiumx.com/beta.html

mangoSharingan said:

Click on 'View' and then select 'Show Offline Contacts'.

Click to expand...

Many thanks

adiumx

anyone knwo how to view file transfers...without opening the console?

ocie said:

adiumx

anyone knwo how to view file transfers...without opening the console?

Click to expand...

Grab a beta

It seems ok although everynow and again I get a message come up about people not being part of a group or something and do I want to add them, only does for the same few people.

Also, I can't move the buddy list! If I try to drag it I just pull whichever group heading I grabbed but it springs back when you let go...!?

silverpenguin said:

I recently purchased a Mac Mini and now do the majority of my surfing on it and just leave the pc upstairs for picture editing etc.

I use MSN and AIM but would like to not have two seperate apps running at once to talk to people. What is the best one out there that will let me combine my contacts from both of these into one?

Thanks for the help

Click to expand...

I like GAIM

fiery said:

I like GAIM

Click to expand...

Adium is based off of the gaim project. The two projects frequently exchange code and ideas from what I hear.

I have been nothing but impressed with both Adiums customizability (is that a word? ) and its function, I have had zero stability issues.

I too use Adium, but I also heard that both Fire and Proteus are good (I think you have to pay $ 15 for Proteus). I got mine from here:

http://www.adiumx.com
http://firesourceforge.net
http://www.defaultware.com/proteus

None of these support audio or video chats, just text-only. Both Fire and Adium alert you when you have received an email in, say Yahoo or MSN, while both Adium and Proteus can display the song you are listening to in iTunes as your user status. Proteus supports SMS forwarding, while on Adium you can take a pic of yourself with your webcam and use it as buddy icon. Adium doesn't support blocking (directly, that is), while Fire is known to sometimes have issues with transferring files. I personally find Adium the easiest to use insofar as receiving and sending, adding accounts and customising its look are concerned.