I have a long-distance friend who insists that I use Yahoo! instant messenger. Am I wrong to think that these things come bundled with all kinds of garbage that I don’t want on my PC? Same with .MSN, etc.
I’ve been using soulseek, which seems to be free of these things, and would prefer my friends did as well (just for the purposes of chatting with me), but I suppose that is selfish of me to reqeust that they install it.
Can anyone confirm or deny the validity of the comments made in the first paragraph? Is one better than the others?
If you are worried about ad-ware, spyware or general mal-ware then you need not. The worst thing you might get with yahoo messenger is the yahoo toolbar that can easily be removed, MSN is free of such things.
AOL Instant Messenger has started bundling garbage with its program, but it’s easily disabled in the install process.
I liked Yahoo messenger when I used it but all of my friends are on AIM …
You also may want to look into the third party programs such as GAIM and Trillian, which allow you to access the popular instant messaging networks (AIM, Yahoo, IRC, etc.) all at once and without downloading the “official” programs.
I doubt any of these highly popular programs would install malicious software on your machine. Annoying software, yes, but not malicious.
I think AIM installs WildTangent. You can un-install it and still be able to use AIM.
I can recommend Trillian, though. It takes a wee bit of “getting used to” but after a short while you will love it. It’s free (or you can pay for Pro) and ad-ware free. It’s latest version also includes Soulseek, I believe. If not, there’s a plugin you can download I think.
One of my friends uses GAIM as well, he has no beefs although every so often he loses our conversations and has to reboot…
Forgot to add a link to Trillian’s official site. Pretty sure there’s some malicious bogus versions out there that will not make your experience a happy one.
AOL Instant Messenger did go to crap after version 5.2.3292. They started installing ad-related software (wildtangent etc) even if you tell it NOT to install and added features which did nothing more than slow down your system. Fortunately you can still get their last stable versions here
I know the guy who coded in the advertisement at the bottom of the MSN messenger chat box and the app-sharing bit which allows you to say go through a Word document on your computer, and the person you shared with will be able to see the same thing on his screen.
He was relatively frank about things that he didn’t like when he was at MS, and he did use MSN messenger himself and got us all using it–so between those two items my guess would be that if he knew of anything malicious he would have told us and further he would not have gotten us started using it instead of someone elses.
An interesting tale was about their war to make MS messenger able to communicate with AOL messenger, but AOL finally figured out a way that specifically blocked MSN messenger off that is entirely solid
Anecdotal evidence of course, but there’s my two cents.
In addition to WildTangent, AIM also installs something called “Viewpoint” and its associated “Viewpoint Manager.”
I can’t say I ever saw anything nasty out of either of them, but I delete them anyway. If they don’t tell me they’re installing themselves and what they’re doing, I don’t want them.
A few other good IM clients if you don’t want to deal with the official ad-ridden ones and you don’t like Trillian (I had issues with Trillian back in the day, but hopefully they’ve fixed those bugs by now):
Besides cost, as **mittu ** pointed out, the basic version isn’t too much different than Pro. I actually bought Pro but that was after using it for 2 years and wanting to give my $$ for a job well done.
Nothing wrong with using Basic (free) at all, and I would estimate more than half the Trillian users use it.
I do actually use Yahoo Messenger sometimes. Usually just because I want to use its games or listen to Launch Cast. Just pay attention when you install that and you should be free of any of its “extras”.
