Anthology of Interest

Up until recently Tamara and I have been using Nitro on Mac OS X for all our instant message needs. Nitro is a Jabber only client, so we've been using a MSN gateway to talk to people using MSN. Both jabber.org and the MSN gateway have been increasingly flaky lately, so it was time for a change. A client which could take Jabber, AIM, MSN, etc was required.

I tried out Adium a while ago, and found it kind of over done... too much stuff. I also tried Gush, but it uses a flash interface (I think) and it's too big and slow on our little iBook. Psi is another one. It runs on OS X, Linux, and Windows. I never liked the look or feel of it though.

Enter Fire. I have never seen it on Jabber.org's client list before, but it's been around since 2000, almost five years. It handles all the required networks and seems to work very well so far. It packs a lot of functionality and configurability, but the interface seems well thought out and it is entirely usable. Recommended, if you need a Jabber client that can also talk to MSN, ICQ, etc. with a pleasant functional interface.