Trillian Review
Trillian is a software application that lets you IM people who use AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, and IRC chat programs. It is very easy to use, doesn't take up that much space or memory, and is free.
Installing Trillian is easy, and just involves running the setup program, and selecting where you want to install it.
Once it is installed, you can set up which of your accounts you want Trillian to use. Remember that you have to have signed up with an account with AIM, Yahoo, etc. etc. if you want to use them. Trillian provides links to the signup pages, which saves a lot of time. For each account you can specify whether you want Trillian to sign you in automatically when Trillian loads, or whether you want to sign-in manually.
From there, it will setup your buddy lists if you already have one, or you can add contacts manually. You can place contacts into groups, which is nice if you have a lot of them.
For the instant messaging itself, the program uses tabbed windows, though you can set it up to use separate windows if you want.
While Trillian claims to support file transferring, I have not been able to make it work yet. Inevitably, it says that the transfer has failed. It may have something to do with my firewall, but I am not sure.
If you want video-chat, you can spend $30, and get Trillian Pro which offers that, along with a few other things.
All-in-all, Trillian is a great program, and is perfect if you use multiple chat clients, or if you just want to get rid of the ads that the other clients use.
| Pros | Cons |
| Works with almost every major IM service Free Fast Low space and memory usage |
File transfer doesn't seem to want to work Video-chat only supported in paid version |