Instant Messaging: all jolly good fun and that but the party is spoilt by clients that lock you into one system. Your choice of online chat chums is limited to those on the same network as you. What you need is a client which can run multiple accounts on multiple IM networks, Enter Gaim which does just that. You can connect to them all at once and chat to your heart’s content.

Gaim includes support for file transfer, away messages, typing notification and MSN windows closing notification and more. It has feature of its own too, including Buddy Pounces, which can perform a specific task such as play a sound when your ‘buddy’ does something, quite.

It runs on Linux, Qtopia, Windows, MacOS X, and BSD. It’s free and does a very good job. If you want to take your IM to the world then this does a good job, all for free of course.

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