My friends and I all currently use Windows Live Messenger because of its Groups chat feature, but on April 8th (a date they keep pushing back) they're decommissioning the messenger and making everyone use ("upgrade to") Skype. Skype is an okay replacement, and can do group chat similarly, but really nobody wants to leave it running all the time just for a text chat, so we're considering other options.
Good group chat functionality is really the only requirement I'm looking for. We don't want to have to invite people to the conversation every day; we just want to sign in and be in the room. It's not entirely necessary for there to be one-on-one chat, though it'd be nice.
I was thinking about an IRC channel or something, but I'm a control freak and looked into server software (I've got an old computer I use as a dedicated server for stuff) and the open-source community seems to hate making simple interfaces, good documentation, and easy setup. I've also considered using web languages or BYOND to create my own server. BYOND chat server would take me like... five minutes... Not everyone in the group's a BYOND user, but if I'm gonna controlfreak, that'd be the easiest way to design a client.
Anyone got any suggestions for what to use?
ID:1206054
 Mar 21 2013, 3:47 am
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Mar 21 2013, 8:43 am
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Vrocaan
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Skype's probably the best. It's not hard to completely close the program, y'know.
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You should just move to Skype. It's pretty much the same thing and you can use your Microsoft account with it.
but really nobody wants to leave it running all the time just for a text chatThis doesn't really make sense, as it's the same with WLM. I think you need to figure out how to actually use Skype, as the Group conversations and chats you are in are saved in the Recent chats, regardless of if you close the chat windows. | |
There's a phone application called Group Me. My sales team and I use it all the time too update each other instantly. That might be something you want to look into.
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Well, the issue with Skype constantly running was that it consumes way more resources than WLM. Some people didn't want that. There are also a lot of amenities Skype doesn't have, like custom fonts. Skype would absolutely work; we're just looking for the best alternative.
But we've still got like five hours to figure something out. Plenty of time. I just glanced at Group Me and think I'll give it a closer look. | |
WLM won't be around much longer, except for in China, they moved all WLM to Skype so pretty much, get used to it or use Pidgin.
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There's Trillian, and maybe Miranda IM. I'm not sure if the latter has group messaging or not, but I personally have switched to Trillian and Skype. I also have Pidgin installed.
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