Intranet instant messaging?

Factual Questions
1

We have PCs (XP, Win 7) and Mac OSX machines here (and an occasional Linux machine) that are sometimes used on different floors. Sometimes one of us needs to ask/say something to the other, but can’t really shout (e.g., one of us is on the phone). I’m pretty sure Windows has/had some sort of pop-up service, but was subject to abuse by spammers and whatnot. Plus, I don’t know if it worked with other OSs.

I’d rather not install a whole IM client (AOL?) on our machines, but will if that’s the only way to go. Is there a free, very light footprint app that will let us send basic pop-up text messages between machines?

Thanks,

Rhythm

2

Various versions of MS Windows have the Messenger service which allows you to send messages between PCs. It’s not the most reliable thing in the world.

You’re probably better off setting up some kind of XMPP service (Openfire, eJabberd, etc…) on a server and installing appropriate clients on the workstations.

3

What you need is hipchat. It’s made, at lerast in part, by the same group of guys who made HipCal.MyPimp, if you ever used those. It works across multiple platforms (Win, Mac, Linux,) has the capability to have mutliple chat rooms for different things, you can password protect them or give an uathorized list of who can join, etc…

And, IMO, the best part?

When you join a new chat, you see the chat history for the room. No longer are you thrown willy-nilly mid-conversation with no idea what’s going on.

Edit: Although I guess the bad thing is that it runs from a central server, not on your own intranet. So there is that.

4

Try Adium on OS X.
It’s what I use at home.

5

FWIW, we use MS Office Communicator at our office.

6

Not something I’d run in my business if confidentiality is at all important to you.

7

Thought I’d post our solution on the off chance someone finds this thread via a search:

Apple publishes Bonjour for Macs, PCs, and Linux. It uses the local network to find and link to other machines.

Apple Bonjour FAQ:

OS X has Bonjour built in, as well as the iChat client.

I was able to add Bonjour to the Linux machine (Ubuntu) via Synaptic.

Apple publishes Bonjour for Windows.

For the Linux and PC I downloaded and installed Pidgin, a very simple ad-free open source chat client that works with a host of other services (e.g., AIM, Yahoo). As noted upthread, I don’t use them so can’t say anything about how well they work for that.

The only hiccup is that on my 64-bit Windows 7 machines I needed to install both the 64-bit and the 32-bit versions of Bonjour. However, I can’t say for sure if both are needed: I was having connection problems, went to Pidgin’s support chatroom and was advised to try installing the 32-bit Bonjour as well. As soon as I installed it, everything worked flawlessly. However, because I haven’t yet uninstalled the 64-bit version, I can’t tell if both are needed or if I only need the 64-bit version if I’m working with a 64-bit client.

Once installed (with minimal configuration effort), all machines instantly saw each other and were able to send IMs and files over the LAN. Pidgin also has a print wizard add-on, but since our printers are already networked I don’t know how it functions.