Must Accounts Live Forever
Currently, I have my Jabber account rigged up to keep my presence alive on the “legacy” chat networks[1]. However, so many of my friends and family have moved over to XMPP networks (Jabber and Google Talk) that it barely makes sense to keep these accounts around.
Once you factor in the constant “Log into your Hotmail account!” spam[2] and “5489751621897@icq wants authorization to view your status” spam from miscellaneous chatbots, it really doesn’t make any sense at all… unless you factor in those people who might still use only the legacy networks.
So, a few questions for regular readers and members of “legacy” contacts. Are you just using a legacy network and none of the XMPP networks? Do you have a good reason why we should keep using those old networks? Tell us your point of view in a comment.
If you’ve got me set up on one of your legacy accounts, but not on your shiny new Jabber/Google Talk account, let me know! Both of us could use one less reason to hold on to old and spammy networks.
I don’t think I have you added as a friend on Google Talk. I know I’ve bugged you on AIM/ICQ anyway. It’s highly likely I would continue to IM you via Trillian (meaning not using your shiny XMPP account) because I tend to keep Google Talk minimized out of the way.
If only I didn’t have to pay to get the Jabber plugin enabled for Trillian… It’d be nice to just be running one IM client again. *sulk*
(I tried Pidgin and Miranda. No luck there. Still prefer Trillian, especially now that it doesn’t randomly hang anymore.)
pikafoop wrote:
Oh yeah — Trillian! I remember that now. What a lifesaver. I started on ICQ, but you meet that guy who only uses AIM, and then you have coworkers or lab partners that only use MSN or Yahoo!… I did pay for Trillian for at least one year, but after that, I just wanted to use Jabber with the transports, so that I wouldn’t have to put up with the dreaded “I left myself logged in at home, and now I’m popping on and offline every two seconds” problem.
I’m using Adium now, at least on my MacBook Pro, which has all the benefits of these approaches and an integrated contact list. But, it’s only OS X, so I’m using Psi on my Linux and Windows boxes, which is XMPP-only. I guess I should give Pidgin a fair shake.