The Software I Use - Trillian

I stopped using AOL Instant Messenger AGES ago. I got sick and tired of dealing with that damned program (especially when it started running video ads in the background) that I just had to get rid of it. I bounced around between a variety of different Instant Messenger Clients and finally settled on Trillian from Cerulean Studios.

Why Trillian? First off, the free version is ... well ... free. It's also fully featured. You can connect to all the major IM services (except Google - but are they really a major IM service?) at the same time in one window. You get tabbed conversations and a pretty decent archive of all your conversations.

While Trillian 3 is excellent, Trillian Astra (their un-released new product) also looks fantastic. If you still manage a lot of contacts through IM Trillian is worth a closer look!