December 7, 2001

8:25 AM

Trillian, one of the better chat programs out there, just got better. Version 0.70 is now available and it runs smoothly and looks great.
posted by davehat (37 comments total)

Is it worth switching from Odigo?
posted by Voyageman at 8:31 AM on December 7, 2001

I coincidentally found this yesterday, and love it. I use all the messengers becuase I have friends (imagine that!) on each service, and this prog is clean (once you use it in standard, not advanced mode) and lightweight, unobtrusive, and just plain alright.
posted by adampsyche at 8:36 AM on December 7, 2001

yep, certainly is! I've was with Odigo, and Trillian is far cleaner, has been no hassle, and works every time (including ICQ, which is famously intermittent with Odigo)...
posted by wibbler at 8:37 AM on December 7, 2001

...also, it doesn't appear that Odigo lets you use the MSN service.
posted by adampsyche at 8:38 AM on December 7, 2001

running OSX, Fire is a great app, which uses the jabber system... and great looking too!
posted by bluno at 8:43 AM on December 7, 2001

...also, it doesn't appear there's a Mac version.
posted by KLAX at 8:44 AM on December 7, 2001

I wish I'd posted this program on here earlier - I feel stupid now. The designers have been aching for donations for months now... I hope this program goes from strength to strength...
posted by wibbler at 8:45 AM on December 7, 2001

I've been using trillian since the spring and love it.. only one gripe.. I wish it could do fiile transfers . The only file transfers that it'll do right now are on irc.

If you use more than one messanger this is for you.. oh, and another great thing about trillian.. no ads.
posted by the_ill_gino at 8:45 AM on December 7, 2001

It can do file transfers now! GO GET IT...
posted by wibbler at 8:51 AM on December 7, 2001

PS I found Odigo did work with MSN.
posted by Voyageman at 9:03 AM on December 7, 2001

Trillian 0.7's contact list window appears glitchy on my (95) system--dunno if it's a problem with the default skin or what. File transfers are great and all, but I haven't used them yet. I wish it had Jabber support (though WinJab 1.0, long in 0.xes, is out now too). 0.7's UI is a bit less complex than the previous version's, which is very nice.

That Trillian 0.7 is my personal favorite IM client right now is more a comment on how bad the IM client market is.
posted by markpasc at 9:20 AM on December 7, 2001

Trillian is by far the best solution, been using it now for almost a year.

0.70 is nice, but I've noticed some skin issues (standard windows minimize and close buttons overwrite skin's at times, blacked out space when changing window sizes, etc., running win2k), which can hopefully be cleared up soon.

other than that, file transfers work great and they finally brought in systray message notification like ICQ instead of the windows popping up automatically. tons more features that are worth mentioning (transparency, if you like it!), so definitely give it a try.
posted by physics at 9:34 AM on December 7, 2001

I love it, everyone in my department uses it now, (fat ass geeks can't be expected to walk 10 feet to commune!) and a lot of people on another board I frequent made the switch as well.

Think I'll go drop some change in the tip jar.
posted by Mick at 9:41 AM on December 7, 2001

Great. I've been using trillian for about a year now, loved how it was compact, clean, and fast. How that the file transfer works it's all the better.
posted by tiaka at 9:47 AM on December 7, 2001

Hooray!! I've been waiting for this release forever, now I can finally not annoy my non-trillian using friends by not being able to do file transfers and not being able to see fonts and colors or process html in messages.

I found a cool feature too, window transparency, 10-90%.. interesting potential.
posted by iamjacksamnesia at 9:58 AM on December 7, 2001

pity the poor Mac OS 9 user...
posted by gwint at 10:06 AM on December 7, 2001

pity the poor Mac OS 9 user...

I always have ;)
posted by Mick at 11:08 AM on December 7, 2001

Version 0.70 users: does this version of Trillian actually block?

I was using the previous version, and if I were to block a user, the next time I would sign on, the supposedly blocked user would be able to see me. In order to block the person again, I would have to delete the contact, add it again, and block it again. The performance had to be repeated everytime I opened up Trillian, so I finally went back to AIM and MSN.
posted by jennak at 11:20 AM on December 7, 2001

Ah, this is so very nice. So many little things, like away message handling, line breaks in profiles, alphabetization of contact list, all of these got fixed & I am very happy with it. I always worry with new versions of software that instead of addressing the little problems they'll tack on a bunch of bloated new "features" in the hopes that people will like them enough that they'll ignore the things that went unfixed. It's nice to see that Cerulean actually tackled the little things...
posted by zempf at 12:00 PM on December 7, 2001

Tillian is the best.
posted by aaronshaf at 12:55 PM on December 7, 2001

What about History? The previous versions have had little to no history functions comperable to ICQ's history. The last one I tried was only a txt file that opened in Notepad.
posted by nwduffer at 1:12 PM on December 7, 2001

>The last one I tried was only a txt file that opened in Notepad.

Same in 0.70.
posted by ericost at 1:26 PM on December 7, 2001

Whereas Trillian doesn't offer all of the features of ICQ, it is still pretty nifty. I use it because I have friends on AIM, MSIM, ICQ and Y! and its a heck of a lot easier to have one program running as opposed to 4 different ones pinging and blipping in the background.

If everyone I knew used ICQ, I would use ICQ exclusively as it has incredible functionality. As it is, I would never be able to persuade everyone to use it as, at first glance, ICQ can seem a bit daunting compared to, say, AIM. This way I can chat to everyone I know without asking them to get a new bit of software.
posted by davehat at 1:38 PM on December 7, 2001

So I just downloaded Trillian 0.70. And then spent a while changing or disabling all the annoying sounds (what's with that one that plays when a message arrives in a window that's not on top? can it be more annoying?). It sounds like AIM now, 'cause that's what I'm used to hearing.

And I like it.

One thing I've always wondered about these unified IM clients, though -- what's with the IRC support. IRC is definitely not IM.
posted by CrayDrygu at 2:07 PM on December 7, 2001

It just occured to me that those "annoying sounds" are not the default ones, but rather the ones with the Odigo skin. Anyway.
posted by CrayDrygu at 2:08 PM on December 7, 2001

IRC is definitely not IM.

Sure it is, if one of your friends comes on IRC and /msgs you.
posted by kindall at 2:27 PM on December 7, 2001

Love the new Trillian -- I've been griping about the lack of file transfer for ages, and having to keep AIM around just for that purpose. I'm still waiting for better skins, though -- the current crop thus far is pretty bad, though the default one's contact list is kind of slick. I wish the Techpole skin would be redone for this version, as it was clean and simple (one of the reasons why I never understood anyone who didn't have severe issues with ICQ's mammoth, unwieldy interface -- giant banner ads on the message window?).
posted by Big Fat Tycoon at 4:40 PM on December 7, 2001

I tried Trillian before, didn't like it and tried to uninstall it, but that turned out to be a nightmare. It just wouldn't uninstall, and I had to go through manually to try to delete everything without getting rid of other essentials. What a mess. Makes me hesitant about giving the new one another shot.
posted by Poagao at 10:53 PM on December 7, 2001

Poagao I can't be 100% sure that you won't strike the same problem again (different systems and all that) but I just gave it a test run as a new user and uninstalled it for the time being. No problems at all.

When you install Trillion the second screen you fill out asks you if you want to "add unistall info to registry" I ticked it. I'm guessing that wasn't available when you last tried it out.
posted by lucien at 11:20 PM on December 7, 2001

One of the most important features of ICQ (for me) is the ability to preview mail from all of my POP3 accounts and delete junk from the server before I've even downloaded it. Trillian sounds cool, but before I switched over I'd want some other software which would do that email previewing thing. Any ideas?
posted by walrus at 4:16 AM on December 8, 2001

Walrus, try EzPop. I've just started using it, and it's brill. You can download it from www.glabouni.com/ezpop. It's free, looks great and works.
posted by Duug at 9:43 AM on December 8, 2001

I love Trillian.
posted by animoller at 11:38 AM on December 8, 2001

Tried Trillian for a day based on this post, but will stick with Odigo. Found navigation difficult and buddy lists difficult to read (maybe just too set in my ways)
posted by Voyageman at 12:15 PM on December 8, 2001

How dare they name the product after a Douglas Adams character and not produce a Mac version? Savages.
posted by likorish at 12:35 PM on December 8, 2001

Cheers Duug, I'll give it a look. By the way, here's the link.
posted by walrus at 4:25 PM on December 8, 2001

Trillian has been my IM tool of choice for many months. I still keep each individual service installed on my machine in case I need to load it up to transfer a file or do something else along those lines. Talk about an EXCELLENT app!
posted by campy at 10:40 PM on December 8, 2001

I tried Odigo, but it doesn't let you use the ICQ "talk mode" for chat so I had to drop it. Does Trillian let you do that? =)
posted by xyzzy at 7:43 AM on December 10, 2001