A Review of Pidgin - An Open Source Instant Messenger Program

Pidgin, an open source instant messenger program, is unlike most programs out there. What are some advantages? It's free, it's memory-friendly and it's simply awesome. Originally called GAIM or Gtk+ AOL Instant Messenger, it was forced to change names due to legal pressure from AIM. However, even this did not stop the program from becoming that it is now.

The program does exactly what it was developed to do: to offer instant messaging from multiple protocols on the same client. In doing so, it offers support for the popular services: AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and IRC as well as less used ones. If there is one that you want to use, there is sure to be a plugin for it; Xfire, for example, can be used through a 3rd party Plugin.

Some other features that have only recently been implemented in other applications include logging and tabbing. The ability to have a history of all things said is a great addition; Pidgin also automatically organizes them by each chatting session. It's easy to quickly find specific words or important information from past sessions. Tabbed programs save memory and that's exactly what this does, but it also makes it much easier to go from chat to chat.

All of this fulfills and goes beyond the basics of any instant messaging need.

From personal experience, however, I can assure anyone who is looking for a program that works well, has many basic features and does exactly what it should, should use PIdgin. Some other smaller features that I've loved using is Buddy Pounce and History. Buddy Pounce allows the user to define actions when certain things happen, for example, if a friend signed on you could automatically send a message. History shows the last chat session with the user when a new session starts, extremely useful if the window is closed and the person starts talking but you don't know what's going on (which happens to me quite a bit!).

For some users who need video or audio chat, this program does not offer those nor do I know of any plugins for those. However, the developers to plan on implementing some kind of feature like this in the future. Other than this, there is little if any other disadvantage to using Pidgin.

Thus, I highly recommend using Pidgin over any other Instant Messaging application.