David Norton

I know there are a lot of people like me. Software engineers or other professionals that use Macs at home but are required by their company's IT departments to use Windows at work. As a web developer there are many, many reasons to prefer Mac OS X over WIndows XP (or Vista which we have thankfully not upgraded to). I am not going into those reasons here. I am simply going to share about one Windows application that is very nice.

My biggest problem with Windows is simple usability: most Windows applications don't try to be intuitive and become confusing, slow, button-laden behemoths.

And yet some don't. Pidgin is the old Gaim. It is a multi-protocol (including AIM, Yahoo!, GTalk, and Bonjour) instant messaging client that is simple, usable, and powerful. They used Adium for Mac OS X as their inspiration, and I think they did a really good job. I often work remotely, and use IM as a primary communication tool. Pidgin help me communicate, and it doesn't get in the way.