But does it have RealPlayer integration?

Been using it since beta ~97.
Will always be using it.

Haters gonna Facebook chat (f facebook)

Kar98: But does it have RealPlayer integration?

Screw that, I wish they made a mobile version for my pager.

And one day Facebook will suffer the same fate.

AIM was an absolute necessity when I was in college. I remember thinking that it would be around forever because it was so useful for contacting people.
I have probably logged onto it 3 times in 5 years.

The prevalence of multi-IM clients (Digsby, Trillian, Adium, etc) have made this a moot point. If someone wants to instant message me the conversation goes, "Sure, I'll Im you. What do you use and what's your name?"

Hell, I still even run ICQ on Trillian

I'm consistently surprised by how many AIM icons I see on phpBB profile pages. Every year, I figure that and ICQ will finally fade away, but every year I am disappointed.

dnrtfa but aim's had embedded images and video chat for a while now... so i assume that isn't what this is talking about

AIM is actually still popular.

/probably because they hired a 3rd party company to develop it, vs whoever developed the rest of their junk. It's gone downhill though since I don't think there's any real active development on it.

/MS Communicator, OTOH, is a piece of shiat.

/opinions based on my use of all of the competing protocols through a multi IM client, such as pidgin on my linux boxes, and imo chat on my android devices.

lordargent: /MS Communicator, OTOH, is a piece of shiat.

the improved "Lync" is even worse

I have seriously offered people money (or at least, a few rounds of beer) to get the hell off of AIM. I'm pretty sure I don't even need two full hands to count the number of friends still on it.

/ Google Talk & Facebook Chat ftw.

Detinwolf: lordargent: /MS Communicator, OTOH, is a piece of shiat.

the improved "Lync" is even worse

And what's worse yet, farking expensive.

My photo is an animated gif of a geocities era under construction icon.

MightyPez: The prevalence of multi-IM clients (Digsby, Trillian, Adium, etc) have made this a moot point.

Indeed. Adium on the Mac, IM+ on the iPad and iPhone.

Pidgin is great if you just want to chat and not have a bunch of bullshiat to deal with. And it supports AIM, Google Chat, etc.

cheaper than farking text messages

Detinwolf : the improved "Lync" is even worse

Does it still suffer from my biggest gripe?

I use many different machines between work and home, so in the past, I would log in to my IM clients from multiple machines at the same time. And it's interesting comparing how different protocols handle this.

AIM, just doesn't care. If someone sends you a message, it goes to all of your logged in clients.

Yahoo, signs out your other clients when you sign in from another location.

Communicator seems to just send it to the client that has been online the longest. So, say I have a screensharing session from home in the morning. Then go in to work without signing out communicator at home. When I get to work and sign into communicator, ALL of the messages people send me (without me sending them a message first) go to my home machine only.

So I'll get home and see IMs like

Hi
I have a quick question, got a minute?
Hey, are you there?
Hello?

And I'm like, WTF MS Communicator, this machine has been idle for hours, why the hell are you sending my messages there? How could you screw something like that up so badly?

lordargent: AIM, just doesn't care. If someone sends you a message, it goes to all of your logged in clients.

AIM used to only send it to clients that were not set to "Away"

I use bitlbee and digsby at the same time... until about a week ago i would set one account to away, log in from the other location and messages would only go to the account that was not set to away.

Starting last week, AOL just starting blasting messages to all accounts, regardless of status.

At least I assume AOL started this...it could be something with Digsby/bitlbee.

Smiths: Been using it since beta ~97.
Will always be using it.

Haters gonna Facebook chat (f facebook)

THIS

Smiths: AIM used to only send it to clients that were not set to "Away"

Interesting, I think I had a fairly long away time set. And I switch from machine to machine throughout the day so.

Away or not, at least the message goes somewhere logical.

MightyPez: The prevalence of multi-IM clients (Digsby, Trillian, Adium, etc) have made this a moot point. If someone wants to instant message me the conversation goes, "Sure, I'll Im you. What do you use and what's your name?"

This. It's all about getting a good client. That way you can set it up once and forget about it. No skin off my back if someone still wants to IM me on Y! Messenger or farking Livejournal Chat or whatever (both of which work better than Facebook's piece of corn-studded crap). AIM (at least the protocol) works perfectly fine, still.

lordargent: I use many different machines between work and home, so in the past, I would log in to my IM clients from multiple machines at the same time. And it's interesting comparing how different protocols handle this.

Yeah, that does suck. I usually say f it and close my client at home when I go to work. I can live without being signed into an IM client for an hour a day.

I've been using Pidgin for a number of years now. Here are the connection options it gives me:
AIM (got 2 of those)
Bonjour (who?)
Facebook (uhm, no, I don't even like using FB chat when FB's open)
Gadu-gadu (who?)
Google Talk (ok, got one of those)
GroupWise (uhm, no)
ICQ (I used to be 10787619, but why bother?)
IRC (not very useful anymore)
MSN (uh, no - creep/idiot factor)
MixIt (who?)
MySpace Talk (uh, no - see MSN)
SILC (who?)
SIMPLE (who?)
SameTime (who?)
XMPP (Gtalk got that one)
Yahoo (uh, no - even creepier/more idiotic than MSN)
Yahoo JAPAN (see Yahoo, but with tentacle porn)

So yeah, I don't see what's so bad about MSN, except for the occasional, easily ignored spambot. I do kinda miss the salmon bots, though. Those were fun.

melopene: So yeah, I don't see what's so bad about MSNAIM, except for the occasional, easily ignored spambot. I do kinda miss the salmon bots, though. Those were fun.

FTFM.