I have tried Trillian before. But I had to give it up when the support for Google Talk through their Jabber/XMPP plug-in was announced for only Pro users. After several years, I’m trying Trillian again. The next version of their chat client called ‘Astra’ is in beta testing and so far I’m very impressed.
The best thing that has happened to Trillian with Astra is that they have made a whole range of previously pro-only features free. The entire plug-in system including the Jabber/XMPP plug-in to connect to Google Talk is now free. This makes the free client appeal to everyone and be competitive with other clients on the market.
There are premium features such as history viewer, themes and a possible iPhone version which you can purchase by paying a one-time fee (no need to pay every year). And then there are premium services such as web-based chat and video chats which have annual cost to use. Overall, I feel that the new model of their premium services and subscriptions is very good to make the free offering competitive enough without destroying their ability to monetize.
Trillian Astra boasts of more than 400 features with highly customizable interface for IM, mail, social networks and content syndication. It syncs your contact data and preferences between your computers and keeps itself updated. Tabbed windows will keep your desktop clutter free as there are no separate windows for each person you are chatting with.
The current beta release is pretty stable and I haven’t faced any issues so far. If you want to try it out, go to their website and signup for beta invitation. They seem to be pretty open now to beta invites. I got my invite in just few minutes after the signup.
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