Pidgin 2.0 Rocks

The universal IM client known as GAIM became Pidgin last month after settling an issue with AOL. The 2.0.0 release was announced earlier this month. This week, I started using it to see what’s up.

It rocks. I think it leaves the 2.0 betas in the dust too. The general feel and overall polish is great. Easy on the eyes. Easy to use.

As a refresher, if you’ve not heard of GAIM or Pidgin:

Pidgin is an instant messaging program for Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes. You can talk to your friends using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, and Zephyr.

(from the Pidgin About page)

It offers logging. I’m a nut about logging IM conversations — that’s the main reason I’ve been a Meebo junky for so long. I like my logs. IM logs have saved my butt more than once… Lately, I do all my IM from my work laptop at both the office and home. So, my logs are pretty much just on the one machine, which largely negates my Meebo addiction.

Pidgin still offers tabbed chats. I really like that and had missed it with Meebo. I go nuts if I’m in multiple chats trying to manage all those windows. The tabbed metaphor just works so much better (in my humble opinion).

Downside? 25 – 30 MB for memory usage seems a bit steep. I’m trying to decide if I care, but I was a bit startled to see that amount of memory usage.

Other downside? If I’m not using Meebo, than I’m not using Meebo Me either. Bit of a bummer as I’ve had some fun and interesting conversations over Meebo Me with folks that saw it on my Contact page. Perhaps Meebo needs to open that up…