Trillian: Your Messenger Services Together As One

02/13/2007

There are many instant messaging services available on the internet now, each competing for your attention and the processing power of your computer. With Trillian, you can use all of the major instant messaging services in one convenient program, thus reducing both confusion and resource use on your computer.

Multiple Services As One Means Less Resources

Trillian is equipped to handle the AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN, and Yahoo messenger services. From all the computers I have done work on, I have noticed that the average computer user usually has at least 2 of these programs running on their computer, each taking up space and valuable resources. This means that running these programs, your computer is going to function a lot slower, especially on older computers.For the sake of this article, I am going to focus on AIM and MSN Messenger.

A quick check of my task manager reveals that AIM 6 uses 15-38MB (average 23MB) of memory running idle without any conversations open. MSN Messenger (now Windows Live Messenger) uses 26-30MB (average 26MB) of memory running idle. Trillian uses 2-8MB (average 6MB) of memory running idle. By switching to Trillian, you can save on average 18.5MB of memory just be switching to Trillian. While this may not seem like much, when one starts adding in the spyware that generally is on a computer, the antivirus programs, anything that the manufacturer has loaded on your computer, and anything you have inadvertently loaded on the computer as well, that memory adds up quick, which will lead to a slow computer. Every little bit helps. Also, did I mention that Trillian is Ad-Free. There are none of those annoying ads cycling through the bottom or the top of your buddy window making funny noises or distracting you. I consider this to be a major bonus of Trillian.

The Trillian Interface

The interface of Trillian consists of a buddy list with four drop down menus, only one of which you will likely ever use on a semi-regular basis. That one menu being the one labeled Trillian.

Trillian Has A Very Easy To Use Buddy List.

Below the drop down menus, one will find your buddy icon, display name, and overall connection status. Unlike AIM, Trillian will automatically scale any picture you have to fit the correct buddy icon size. This is nice because it will allow you to have the same picture on MSN Messenger (which supports larger image sizes) and AIM, but not have to separately size them to fit each individual service. They will come up with the maximum picture size possible for others using the actual messenger programs. Below the buddy icon there are several colored dots. Yellow for AIM, Green for ICQ, Red for Yahoo Messenger, and Blue for MSN Messenger. You can use these as a quick check to see if you are actually signed in to each individual messenger service, as if they are not signed, they will be faded out. Since most messenger services are now associated with email, this icon will change to an envelope to notify you that you have new emails. A good feature of these is that you can also click on them to sign on and off individual messenger services. Below these you will also find several links to the individual email addresses that you have attached to Trillian for quick links to checking your email. There are three different skinning options available which change this interface, you can choose the one that suits you best.

The preferences list is nothing special. It gives quick icons to each of the major headings for functions you may want to change in Trillian. The quick tasks feature is helpful, but beyond that it is just like any normal messenger service interface and does not bear much note.

The Buddy List

I like the Trillian buddy list if only because it is very simple. Under the heading of My Contacts, it is divided into the Buddies and Offline Contacts groups. The contacts are sorted by color, depending on which service they belong to. Those who are away have their name adorned with a BRB sign, those who are idle have their names italicized, and those who are mobile phones have a tiny cell phone picture by their screen name. Not enough information for you? You can point your mouse at any screen name and it will bring up more information on that user including their buddy icon, their online time, their away message, and more.

The Chat Window

Trillian Takes A Simplistic Approach To Chatting.

This is a very basic chat window. It follows the same color scheme as AIM where your messages are in red and your buddies are in blue. By default it adds a date stamp into every message. This can be helpful to figure out just when that person sent you that message earlier. The downside to this being that it uses the 24 hour clock, so for those of you who are mathematically challenged, you may have issues with this. However, to compensate for this, it does give you the time of the last message received with the date on the 12 hour clock. Another nice feature of Trillian is that it automatically logs your conversations and makes them very easily accessible, just by clicking the history button in the buddy window. This can also be viewed in the buddy list by right clicking the user name and selecting View Contact History.

Downsides

You get access to over 200 emoticons by default, even more which are only accessible to those who know about them. However, most of these only work if the people you are talking to are also using Trillian. This means that if you send them the duck emoticon, instead of seeing a picture of a duck, most users will only see (duck). Also certain emoticons make sound, which can be distracting to people around you.

Another downside to Trillian is that file transfers are the worst thing ever. This is one feature that does not work at all. Every file I have ever tried to send over Trillian, regardless of what service it was going to has failed. Also any advanced features that are exlusive to the individual messenger services do not work on Trillian. This includes everything from nudges, to winks, to special emoticons, and more.

Final Thoughts

Whether or not to make the switch to Trillian completely depends on how you use your messenger service. For basic chatting features, this program is excellent. However, if you like all the advanced features those other messenger services give you, this is definitely not the program for you. Either way, it is a decent program and well worth the time to try it out.

Rating: 3.5/5


Note: The images have the screen names blurred for privacy reasons.