Current state of Jabber chat?

[akorvemaker]

So, with MSN shutting down in favor of Skype, and (at least a rumor of) Google Talk being discontinued soon in favor of Google+ Hangouts, I'm looking around at alternatives. Facebook Chat is one. FM's chat feature is another.

What seems to be the current state of the Jabber/XMPP chat that's hosted by FM? Does it seem reliable enough for casual chatting? Any major issues? Any hints that it's going away in the near future?

Thanks!

Andy

[hobbes]

Does anyone use FM's jabber feature?

Serious question. It doesn't appear to be a "core feature" since you have to drill fairly low down to find any mention of it on FM's website.

After all, FM seems be spending most of their time on shiny blur effects and cute slide-in animation when a new mail arrives, rather than developing the existing features.

OK, while I'm here, let me rant about Notepad. Yes, I was here many years ago when Rob M realised that he could add an additional field to the database, and voila! Notepad was born. Development since then? Zero.

I'm sure the cute letter icon and transparent effect that appears when you drag an email to a folder more than makes up for this, though.

[digp]

goodbye fastmail

hello gmail

[just1acc]

Originally Posted by akorvemaker

So, with MSN shutting down in favor of Skype, and (at least a rumor of) Google Talk being discontinued soon in favor of Google+ Hangouts.

Your gTalk buddies will not change. hangout is just a better version of gTalk. SMS sending feature hasn't implemented yet but will be done soon.

So you're not missing anything. In case of MS people have to transfer MSN account to skype.

[akorvemaker]

Originally Posted by just1acc

Your gTalk buddies will not change. hangout is just a better version of gTalk. SMS sending feature hasn't implemented yet but will be done soon.

So you're not missing anything. In case of MS people have to transfer MSN account to skype.

Fair enough. It's not disappearing. But neither (Skype & Hangouts) meet my needs as well as their predecessors.

Hangout doesn't (as far as I'm aware) allow me to access it with any simple Jabber client. That's my biggest complaint. On the desktop I use Miranda, a fairly tiny IM client. On the phone I've been using Google Talk, also a very small (600k) app. Hangouts is 11MB. They're not meeting the same need.

For me, especially on limited hardware, small, simple apps that just do what they need to do, and do it well, are important. Skype and Hangouts are both quite bloated in comparison.

I just want the ability to simply and easily send short text messages to a few people. Skype & Hangouts clutter that ability with many other features that I don't need or care about.

[Randymanme]

Originally Posted by just1acc

Your gTalk buddies will not change. hangout is just a better version of gTalk. SMS sending feature hasn't implemented yet but will be done soon.

So you're not missing anything . . .

Not missing anything? Excuse me, but I am missing google voice and video chat. I can't even send text messages in Google+ Hangouts. I think it's absolutely apalling that Google Voice and Video Chat has been so unceremoniously discontinued without even a warning or announcement.

So what alternatives are available? Can I make outgoing phone calls and receive incoming phone calls with Yahoo Messenger or MSN or aMSN?

Any help here will be much appreciated. Thanks.

[Randymanme]

I've just added the extension, Talk Pro for Google Talk™, to Google Chrome and it gives us the option to restore the "old" Google Voice and Video. I don't know, yet, whether or not it works that way on Firefox or IE.

In the future, I'll be sure and read the fine print (or google the topic) before I upgrade.

Thank you.

[Randymanme]

After having installed Talk Pro for Google Talk™ to Google Chrome and restoring the old Google Voice and Video, the old Google Voice and Video has also been restored to Firefox and IE as well. Firefox, by the way, doesn't even have the extension Talk Pro for Google Talk™.