Pidgin Review – A Look At The Universal Chat Client

Keeping up with multiple Instant Messengers can be a pain and a real resource hog. They cut down on your computers speed, your productivity and can just be a real distraction. There are many different programs out there that can consolidate all of your Instant Messengers into one, but which one to choose should you choose?

Let me tell you about an awesome “Super Messenger” named Pidgin. It’s an open source project that is available for both Windows (XP and Vista) and multiple flavors of Linux. It can handle over 16 different protocols including MSN, Yahoo, AIM, Jabber, IRC, MySpaceIM, Google Talk and more, which have been tried and true.

Being open source, it has a great community backing that is constantly improving, upgrading, and making plug-ins for it. With just a couple plug-ins you can even follow your Tweets and Face Book page. Straight out the box it is kind of reminiscent of an old Windows 3.1 application but it is skin able with just a little Googling.

This powerful application can stand toe to toe with any multi-protocol Instant Messenger client including Digsby and Trillian. Plus, you can’t beat the price… It’s free! If you are dealing with multiple Instant Messaging accounts to stay in touch, do yourself a favor and try out Pidgin.
So, jump in, get your feet wet, and download Pidgin from http://www.pidgin.im/

Get accustomed to it and check back here soon for some great tips on this awesome “Super Messenger”!

Note: Recently Microsoft changed up their protocol for MSN.  In order to stay connected with MSN on Pidgin, you must download and install the plugin msn-pecan located at http://code.google.com/p/msn-pecan/

Just shutdown Pidgin, install the patch and change your connection setting to WLM instead of MSN.