Poll: Best IM solution?

[penk]

So say your company has been chugging along without an instant messaging policy. Folks have been using whatever they're comfortable with. This has led to "You're on IRC, I'm on AIM, she's on Gtalk." problems. Things like Pidgin, Colloquy, and Trillian have made it less of an issue, but it would be nice to have SOME policy in place.

Normally, I'd say "Go jabber, run your own server, be happy", but Jabber / GTalk has the fatal flaw (as far as I can tell) of having no chat room / multichat functionality.

So. What would you recommend? The chat room thing is important, but not a deal breaker. Persistent rooms would be nice :)

[Poll #1637469]

Comments

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

That is exactly why I prefaced my comment with "if you've already bought in". If you have a community that already is forced to use Outlook on Windows, I like the product for the reasons I listed. I'm not advocating that you use it out of the blue. Also, the two flaws you listed are no longer true: I just checked the scroll/alt-tab problem, and it doesn't happen; also, supposedly, you can add AIM or other chat contacts into Communicator. (I have chosen not to.)

If you don't want people to click the button, or if you just want to yell at them, don't put it on, dude!

[penk.livejournal.com]

No! Clicky! Must!

It's funny, I have to ACKNOWLEDGE that communicator exists. And I'd love to go "Dave, you ignorant slut... Communicator 5.x.21.4-rev6 is AWESOME! and fixes EVERYTHING"

Sorry if that came across as defensive. Durn that only-one-coffee-down-response-mechanism!

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

It's okay, it's just funny, because my office was in this situation a month ago. And everybody still has Trillian installed too, and I expected to LOATHE Communicator, but... actually... I kinda like it! And I use it on purpose because I like the UI and the features! So you asked a question that was extremely pertinent to me. You don't have to agree, I'm just completely uninterested in arguing about it. :)

I also have an iPhone client that I use on the run (Fuze). I don't love it (specifically, the room support is horrible and strange), but I do use it when I'm on the run and/or on my Linux box at home. I haven't tried SIPE but I keep meaning too.

[buddhagrrl.livejournal.com]

We're using communicator very effectively here. It's great, since we all got it pushed by IT, so for most people there was no need to go install it separately (though I did on my dev machine), Outlook integration is great, status is great, and screensharing (and control sharing) is fast and easy compared to every other option I've had to use, which is key for us since we have so many geographically diverse teams.

For personal use though I'm a big fan of gchat and gtalk.