I’ve “always” used IM clients. I started with ICQ, switched to AIM, then MSN, then Jabber, then Gtalk and more recently Skype. I have all of them open, mostly because I like to be able to talk to everyone without forcing them to switch to something to talk to me but the main client I use, is currently Skype.
Skype is the only one client that isn’t open in any way (application and every protocols). Well I must say, they’ve released their SDK (SkypeKit) very recently (the 22/06/10). People can now build softwares around Skype. But this is not what I want to talk about.
Why I am starting to like Skype ? It’s the best around multiple computers. I can open it on Windows host, a Mac Os X host, a Linux host, and iPhone and still follow the same chat conversation without losing any word of it. What you send and received is completely synchronized between computers. This might also be the biggest drawback for some people. You have to take care of closing your session at work before talking trash about your boss.
Why I’m still not loving it ?
- The available / away state clearly doesn’t work well. It just fails to automatically detect the available / away state. It feels like it’s a totally broken feature (and I’m not the only one who feels that way).
- Exchanged messages sometimes have pretty important delays (something like 5 to 30 seconds).