Pinoy Tech Guy

Written on Monday, 7th of Apr 2008 – 12:04 pm | by sylv3rblade | 424 views

As a frequent netizen, I’ve gained numerous contacts but not all of them share the same messenger service. Yahoo, MSN and Google Talk are the common denominators of my contacts list so I’ve always kept an eye out for any multi-platform client that will serve my needs.

For quite awhile, Trillian has been my guy. It supports many of the popular protocols and even IRC which is a big plus. Trillian even has support for most of the interesting features like video and audio messaging. However, like Kuya Jaypee, I found Trillian to be quite the resource hog.

I’ve been on Gaim (Pidgin) for quite a while since like Trillian, it too has many of the popular features and IM protocols which make it a great choice for multi-OS users since it’s available on Windows, Linux and the Mac.

Then came Meebo. It’s not as powerful as Trillian nor Gaim but it serves most of my purposes especially for file transfer which the latter two seemingly can’t do right.

Now, I’ve found Digsby.

What is Digsby?

Digsby projects itself different from the pack by branding itself as the combination of IM + Email + Social Networks. It’s currently a Windows-only client but I’m quite they’ll be rolling out a Linux and Mac version in due time.

Features:

• Multi-IM support - AIM, MSN (or Windows Live Messenger), Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber Accounts
• Email - Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts
• Social networks - Twitter, Facebook and Myspace
• Audio/Video Chat - from TokBox
• File transfer manager
• Spell checker
• Widget support - Digsby on your site

So what’s Digsby’s advantages over others?

• Tabbed IM windows - big help for multiple conversations at any one time
• Send emails via the IM/conversation window.
• Checks and previews your email inbox - just like the netvibes but works flawlessly
• Non-obstrusive but visible notifications
• Support for custom skins
• Design is simple and effective
• Integration with your Media Player for a Now Playing status

Screenshots:

So is it worth it?

As is the case when trying out something in Beta, Digsby still has a few bugs that make it far from perfect. It works generally flawlessly for messaging, checking your emails and communicating with your social network so Digsby comes clean with it’s promises. Having since used Digsby for about a week, I’ve found some quirks that you may want to know before using it.

• File Transfer can be quirky sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t
• No contact avatars, just the Digsby logo
• Editing contact details can be quirky as well, sometimes it saves, sometimes it doesn’t
• No support for Buzz, annoying but sometimes necessary
• No Linux support, yet
• No feature to check for updates, pretty necessary if you have a 24/7 machine.
• You need to register to the Digsby Network before you can use the service

Now the last one struck me weird since it’s basically the same thing that Trillian has done with Astra (An astra account is needed before you can use the Alpha-version of the new client) not because you need to sign-up for the service but rather what it’s for? After browsing around their site there seems to be no indication of what the digsby account will be of use aside from use of the client.

I’m thinking there will be some updates in the future for this but for the moment, it’s sort of like a key to your Digsby installation (although you can set it to login automatically without asking the details so it beats the point of being a key).

Overall, Digsby is quite a great piece of software. It’s interesting enough to grab my attention and works quite finely enough to replace all you IM clients. I just wish there’s IRC support in the future. If you have a network you want to suggest though, you might want to drop a comment on the Digsby or a post on the forum.

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