Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

You are here: Home / Science & Technology / AIM

AIM

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I’ve finally grown sick and tired of AIM crashing my windows 7- it would just lock up intermittently with AIM not responding, and it would screw the entire system until I rebooted. Is there any other client I can use that will still allow me to use my old AIM address list? And yes, I am sure that hundreds of you are going to chime in with AIM suck blah blah blah, but I have friends I have been gaming with and talking to for 12-15 years on that list, and it was a big enough ordeal moving from ICQ 10-12 years ago.

Reader Interactions

74Comments

  1. 1.

    gnomedad

    Try Digsby. It talks to AIM and a zillion other services. Pidgen is also good and available as a portable version.

  2. 2.

    icedfire

    I’m guessing Trillian is still around. AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and ICQ clients were supported by it, the last time I used it.

  3. 3.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    From the post title, I was afraid Dennis Banks had died and I missed it. Because I could not figure out how the American Indian Movement could figure into a post on Balloon Juice.

  4. 4.

    cynosurescence

    Pidgin is by far the best IM client out there. It’s incredibly stable, free (but please donate if you like it!) and open source. Also has tons of plugins for things like Facebook, Twitter, etc. if you need that functionality over the base configuration.

    http://pidgin.im/

  8. 8.

    Bob

    meebo.com if you just want your AIM list in a browser, but otherwise pidgin or gchat among others.

  9. 9.

    Ducktape

    Pidgin! It’s up to date, Open Source, and also let’s you do multiple other protocols as well. I have my AIM, Googletalk, private Jabber server, MSN Live, and IRC all in my single Pidgin client.

    http://www.pidgin.im/

  10. 10.

    GambitRF

    I’ve been using Pidgin for maybe 3-4 years now. It’s MUCH better than the regular AIM client and uses a lot fewer resources.

  11. 11.

    Tony J

    Why are you mixed up with A.I.M. in the first place, Cole? Those people dress like beekeepers. Evil, Nazi beekeepers.

  14. 14.

    kestral

    Meebo’s okay if you want an in-browser IM service. And it covers AIM and most of the major chat services.

  17. 17.

    jacy

    OMG, ICQ – the memories. I haven’t thought of that in years. Back in the day when the S/O and I were long-distance, we lived on ICQ. Of course now we can just scream from the kitchen.

    Does having no chat client make me a fuddy-duddy? Suddenly I feel old.

  18. 18.

    James Hare

    I’m with the folks saying pidgin for windows, adium for mac. I rarely use pidgin though because I’m always in front of a mac.

  20. 20.

    bottyguy

    Pidgin is the best multi-server IM client I’ve found. That said it’s not always the best if you want to transfer files over IM (usually works) or open a video chat (doesn’t work).

  24. 24.

    catclub

    Jacy @ 17 I not only have no chat client now. I never did have one. My fuddy beats your duddy.

  26. 26.

    jayackroyd

    I used trilium for a while and it worked fine, but gmail’s chat feature integrates AIM. So that’s what I use.

  27. 27.

    Jim C

    Why are you mixed up with A.I.M. in the first place, Cole? Those people dress like beekeepers. Evil, Nazi beekeepers.

    Rupert Murdoch is being tranferred to a new consciousness: M.U.R.D.O.K

  29. 29.

    Sentient Puddle

    Ah, memories of ICQ…

    @jacy:

    Does having no chat client make me a fuddy-duddy? Suddenly I feel old.

    I’ma say no. I still have Adium load up all my accounts, but I don’t think I’ve used it to IM anyone in years. A lot of it is that most of the people I would otherwise IM are all concentrated into a single IRC channel…so is that cheating?

  31. 31.

    Trollenschlongen

    John: The ads on your web site keep trying to sell me stuff and make money for you.

    Could you please tell ABL to post a tirade attacking you for GRIFTING!?

    Thank you.

  33. 33.

    fasteddie9318

    Cole, this whole “internet” “computer” thing only has another couple of weeks left anyway before it’s rendered useless in the post-apocalyptic hellscape.

  37. 37.

    Tony J

    Rupert Murdoch is being tranferred to a new consciousness: M.U.R.D.O.K

    Heh. Malignantly. Unpleasant. Rightwinger. Designed. Only for. Killing. Fits.

  40. 40.

    nobuyuki

    Go with Pidgin or Adium (they’re both the same software under the surface, but Adium’s for OSX users) — Free and open source. Can’t say the same for Trillian, though I used it for a bit in the early 2000’s (very slow on my old P-133 compared to the alternatives…)

  41. 41.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    Tony J and Jim C beat me to the Advanced Ideas Mechanics and MODOK jokes so to prove I’m a bigger nerd than they are I have to inform everyone that I’m currently reading Punisher War Journal #72 and I have the Ghost Rider ps2 “playthrough” up on YouTube while I pretend to “work” this morning.

  43. 43.

    Joel

    I’m probably the 43rd comment to say this, but:

    People still use AIM? That was big when I was in college. In the late 90s.

  44. 44.

    Rorgg

    I’ll be the 8th person to suggest Trillian. Not only will it work fine with the AIM list, but it’ll ease the transition to something else.

  45. 45.

    BruceK

    I’ve been using Trillian for something like ten years now. Moving off the AIM client was almost seamless back then.

    And I think it’s still free (though I paid a little and got the Pro version, which hasn’t given me any problems that I can recall since before the second coming of The Shrub).

  46. 46.

    Michael D.

    On another note, I just found out that my work will match donations to Charlie’s Angels, so they’ll be getting another bit of money from me soon. :-)

  47. 47.

    RareSanity

    If you don’t want to use a dedicated client, just use the GoogleTalk sidebar in Gmail, it supports AIM. Also, if you go that route, if you decide that you do want a dedicated client, there’s a GoogleTalk stand alone client you can run on Windows machines.

    The only reason I’m not suggesting Pidgin or one of the other clients is that if you use GoogleTalk, you get the bonus of free voice calls if you sign up for a GoogleVoice account. It is an awesome solution for communication. Plus, it has video chat.

    I always viewed Pidgin and the like for IM “power users”, if all you want is to be able to IM, using AIM, there really is not a better answer than GoogleTalk. It’s there on any computer that you can access Gmail on. No fussing with installs or thumb drives and the interface will be consistent whether you are on a computer with Windows, OS X, Linux, Anroid, iOS, etc. Set it up once and never have to worry about it again.

    EDITORIAL: For anyone that travels quite a bit and is not taking advantage of the GoogleTalk/GoogleVoice combination, you are doing yourself a disservice, it works awesome. When I have to travel to Japan once a quarter for work, if my wife wants to contact me, she just calls the GV number, it rings my MacBook, I just pop on my bluetooth headset and off we go. Completely free. It’s also completely free for me to call numbers in the US, from Japan, using my MacBook and GV. Saves a hell of a lot of money on cellphone roaming charges and allows us to talk for normal, not “Hurry up and say what you have to say, this is costing a fortune!”, time frames. And, I get to tell my son goodnight with video chat and show him that when it is morning time in Atlanta, it’s night time in Japan. He’s 4 and never gets tired of that one! LOL

  48. 48.

    growingdaisies

    I just moved from AOL IM myself to Pidgin a month ago. (So you’re not the only one.) Kept my old AOL name; no problems.

  51. 51.

    RareSanity

    @RareSanity:

    I just realized how I absolutely butchered the rules for using commas in my comment. I want to apologize to all of the people whose skin is crawling because of my negligence.

  54. 54.

    mellowjohn

    not to sound like an antiquated luddite (antiquated, yes; luddite, not so much), but what the hell are you people talking about?

  55. 55.

    Moik

    Pidgin +1. It supports multiple simultaneous accounts on different protocols, so I usually have chat windows open to my buddies on AIM and my work colleagues on Jabber at the same time.

  56. 56.

    El Cruzado

    This one hits VERY close to home. Didn’t you have a Mac? Just update it to Lion and use iChat.

    That would also help pay my bills.

  57. 57.

    Rick Taylor

    I use Pidgen myself. Simple straightforward software that’s not a resource hog.

  60. 60.

    philowitz

    I’ve been using pidgen for a couple of years with no problems.The transition from aim is seamless.

  61. 61.

    Tony J

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford @ 41

    I’m currently reading Punisher War Journal #72 and I have the Ghost Rider ps2 “playthrough” up on YouTube while I pretend to “work” this morning.

    You win. All I did was spend my lunch hour in the shopping centre reading ‘Siege’ and creating a comfortable personal space by snarling “Where’s the action, Bendis? Where’s the fisticuffs?” whenever anybody walked by.

  62. 62.

    Shinobi

    I”m using digsby now so I can combine my yahoo and everything. I used Meebo at my old job where I did not have admin rights, but sometimes their ads would take over and crash my PC. I also had some stability issues with Trillian but that was a few years ago. SO far digsby is great, it does gmail, aim yahoo and facebook among others.

  63. 63.

    wes

    pidgin and digsby. or if you’re a real man, logging into AIM via gmail! (but pidgin and digsby are friendlier)

  64. 64.

    Terry Chay

    Puffin on windows. Adium if on Mac. Trillian if you are grandfathered or only know how to use the mav app store.

  66. 66.

    beergoggles

    @Bob: I will second Meebo. I always have a browser window open and Meebo also lets u detach chat boxes and move them around the desktop. Make sure to use it with the https prefix and noscript and adblock in firefox.

  68. 68.

    guachi

    If it helps you switch to pidgin, the government uses it on its high security networks to run remote operations all over the globe.

  69. 69.

    Nichole

    I work at AOL. More specifically, I work with the AIM product. I am certainly curious to find out which version of AIM you’re using, and I would love to help you find a solution to your problem.

    Feel free to email me at the email address I entered and I will send you my direct line so we can chat about it.

  70. 70.

    ronin122

    Pidgin is what I use, but I hear good things about Trillian. Try both. Haven’t used AOL’s software for AIM in 5 years and have zero plans on going back

  72. 72.

    Mike B

    I tried Trillian, but it insisted on me signing up for a Trillian account. What’s up with that?

    I use Pidgin. I’m happy with it. I use it on my Windows PC at work, and on my Linux box at home.

  73. 73.

    TomG

    Another vote for Pidgin. For the same reasons – it’s free, and works on Linux and Windows. It’s been around for years and is reliable.

  74. 74.

    inthewoods

    I’ve been using Meebo after dumping the latest version of Trillian – but just started with Pidgin. Would be completely perfect if the email notification was a pop-up vs. the stupid yellow bar across the top.

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