Miranda IM: Fast, Functional, and Free — No Tradeoffs Here Fast, Functional, and Best of All, Free Adam Stone
Here's the typical software tradeoff: You can have it fast, or you can have it functional.
Software can be sleek, compact, and speedy, but the price we all too often pay for this efficiency is a dearth of functionality. Sure it runs faster, but only if you take out all the features.
Now along comes a product that tries to bridge the gap. Miranda IM offers a trim, fast-moving instant messaging tool that is easy to install, takes up little room, and packages only the basic, must-have features. And with a library of more than 300 readily available plug-ins, Miranda can be customized to perform any number of sophisticated IM tasks, thus offering the best of both worlds.
Miranda is a free, open source download that is quick and simple to get up and running with. It took us less than five seconds to grab the installer; after that, installation required only a quick unzip of the self-extracting download.
Here's where 'small and efficient' comes into play. Because it requires so little memory, Miranda IM can be readily used from a removable storage source such as a USB memory stick or even a floppy disk.
The basic Miranda download will support ICQ, AIM, Jabber, IRC, and MSN messaging protocols, while plug-ins can add access to Gadu-Gadu, Tlen, Netsend and other protocols.
The downside? Miranda IM in its standard edition is stripped pretty bare. The basic version lacks many of the functions commonly available in other IM clients, including features like voice chat, video conferencing, and white board support, to name a few.
The IM client makes up for these shortcomings by having a vast range of plug-ins available free for download. These include such popular options as news feeds, emoticons, email notification, message read-aloud, and weather updates.
Let's not forget, though, that this is an open-source project, which of course comes with its own pros and cons. On the upside, the plug-ins are numerous and varied; on the downside, it can take more than a little searching to ferret out all the functions you may need.
One plug-in, for example, delivers the ability to open an edit window for searching contacts. Excellent. Great.
Then there is the LeetConvert Plugin, which converts sent messages beginning with "/l" or "/L" into LeetLanguage. Handy, if you happen to be looking for…um…Leets?
The open-source nature of the project is also apparent in Miranda's other shortfall — that is, the rather meager documentation. It's all there, mostly on the Web site's Help page, but you will have to look for it. Like so many open source efforts, this one assumes a fairly high degree of user autonomy.
On the plus side, open source means no spyware or adware cluttering up the screen or choking your hard drive.
Miranda IM runs on just about any version of Windows, including Windows 95, NT 4, 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, and 2003.
