GAIM multiprotocol Instant Msg check email

[davidh]

Checking web mail is rather slow on dial up.

I found out that the multiprotocol GAIM program will check my AIM and Yahoo web mail accounts for email immediately when GAIM starts up. So don't have to log on to multiple separate web sites to check email (which is very low volume anyway since I don't use web mail much).

Thunderbird checks AOL and AIM email with IMAP protocol (not pop3) which is much faster than glacial AOL webmail, but still TBird is slow on my old 500Mhz PC.

I use AOL/AIM IM, Yahoo IM, and Google Talk IM. And GAIM checks AIM and Yahoo webmail relatively fast. GAIM 1.5. GAIM 2.0 coming soon. GAIM 3.0 will also support free PC to PC voice calls when it comes out. GAIM is open source and supports so many IM protocols that I can't remember them all.

Trillian is good too for multiprotocol with voice too, but Google Talk support is not free in Trillian.

GAIM works on Linux too. There are a couple other free multiprotocol IM programs, but I decided to try GAIM first since it's been around for some years and is multi-platform.

FYI,

DH

[Judy G. Russell]

Sigh... if only it would also check Hotmail...

[davidh]

Sigh... if only it would also check Hotmail... Maybe it does. GAIM supports MSN. I am not familiar with that. There's Windows Live Messenger , but I don't know if that's the same as MSN or not. What I'm saying is that if Microsoft IM software will check for Hotmail new mail, then maybe GAIM will too.

DH

[Judy G. Russell]

Maybe it does.Not according to the GAIM website.

[jdh]

I upgraded to version 2.0. They re-named GAIM to PIDGIN.

I also discovered that it can log on to multiple accounts on the same service at one time. For that reason, I decided to uninstall Thunderbird since I only use Tbird to check IMAP email on AOL and AIM (which for me is only an occasional ad from AOL) since I can use PIDGIN to check for AOL/AIM email.

I don't know if it checks for Hotmail yet or not. I never tried hotmail.

DH

P.S.
There are many multiprotocol IM programs. There is a very big comparison chart for them on Wikipedia.

[Judy G. Russell]

I don't know if it checks for Hotmail yet or not. I never tried hotmail.Doesn't look like it. It's really aimed at the chat folks rather than the webmail folks.

[jdh]

Doesn't look like it. It's really aimed at the chat folks rather than the webmail folks.

I don't know much about chat (as opposed to IM per se). I know Yahoo messenger has chat rooms but they apparently are unmoderated and don't have chat room titles/names unique to the particular topic of discussion (so it's hard to find a chat room since they only have generalized one size fits all titles. For this kind of reason, I believe that some chatters have migrated to such text/voice chat programs as Paltalk (or InSpeak?). Paltalk protocol (text, voice, video) is only supported by Paltalk software, but Paltalk software does also support (text only) IM with AIM and Yahoo.

Personally I use AIM, Yahoo, Pidgin, etc. only for long distance text or voice chats one to one with family members.

I know nothing about Hotmail. However, if there are not actually non-Microsoft mfg'd programs for checking HotMail, then I'd guess it might have something to do with some kind of restrictions imposed by MS. Just guessing.

Foxmail, which I use, does (or used to?) have ability to DL hotmail, but I never tried it. Foxmail is apparently very popular in China.

DH

[Judy G. Russell]

I don't know much about chat (as opposed to IM per se).I meant IM not chat. Sorry about that.