Digsby reviewed : An Almost All-in-One

If you got tired of Windows Live Messenger, there is alternative to the popular IM (instant messenger) service of Microsoft. Other than the web messenger Meebo that I reviewed, there is also Digsby, a new IM client. Digsby is developed by dotSyntax, LLC and rendered using Webkit (the same engine that powered Chrome and Safari).

After installing Digsby, I registered with Digsgy and login to Digsby. I'm greeted with a simple interface that looks good and simple in my eyes. Then it start login to my accounts 1 by 1. They got email notifications for Gmail, MSN, yahoo! and etc.


And they also have social networking shown below (source from Wikipedia):

• MySpace: updates to your friends' profiles, status, and private messages. Provides instant access to various parts of your MySpace account, such as your profile, home page, blog, etc.
• Facebook: updates in your friend feeds. Digsby now works with both the new and old styles of Facebook.
• Twitter: allowing you to easily submit new "tweets", and view your friends' tweets.
• LinkedIn: various updates from your friends.

I don't know about these social networking sites cause I never used them. But I think they fuction same way as the email notifications. Or maybe they just incorperate them into the contacts interface.

The chat interface looks good. And you can change the chat interface too. There are a lot of options to choose from, but I still prefer the "Smooth Operator" theme as other theme lags a bit whenever I want to trace back my conversation.

There is also a problem with the chat interface, where I can't see who really talking when I'm in MSN group chat session. It just display the contact name rather than the nickname of the person talking (typing I mean).

The status display are quite good too as you can type what you are doing. Or you can just choose the Away option.

Overall, this IM client is quite good, only the problem with displaying nickname in MSN group makes me from using Digsby and ditch the Windows Live Messenger.