[REVIEW] Trillian Astra


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ohh thats nice, you got a link to download the skin Bang?

also got this myself, completed 1 offer and got Pro for free

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Am I seeing this correctly? It appears as though any changes I make to my AIM buddies (for instance) do not get reflected in my buddy list as it's stored on the AIM servers. I remember this behavior from years ago but thought it was finally fixed.

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Wow, Trillian Astra is finally out of alpha/beta?

Yea, seriously, I remember years ago waiting for that to be released. Oh well, years later and I don't care anymore :p .

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I don't see any difference. Just a week ago I said for my girlfriend to try it out. She put her email, and applied, 2 minutes later got the download link (via email) :p

What's the difference now? You don't have to sing up? Just that? Ok...

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Just tried Astra again with that skin bangbang linked to. Its a much better looking skin than the default, but its still very Busy. I dunno maybe i've been using Digsby for too long. The one feature I really miss in Astra has to do with Gmail. I'm really spoiled with digsby being able to archive / delete or mark as spam right from the gmail notifier in digsby. I feel lost without it.

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Just tried Astra again with that skin bangbang linked to. Its a much better looking skin than the default, but its still very Busy. I dunno maybe i've been using Digsby for too long. The one feature I really miss in Astra has to do with Gmail. I'm really spoiled with digsby being able to archive / delete or mark as spam right from the gmail notifier in digsby. I feel lost without it.

Use the built in Minimal Cobalt skin.

Any word on the question I asked above?

Am I seeing this correctly? It appears as though any changes I make to my AIM buddies (for instance) do not get reflected in my buddy list as it's stored on the AIM servers. I remember this behavior from years ago but thought it was finally fixed.
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Use the built in Minimal Cobalt skin.

Any word on the question I asked above?

Dunno, I know when I loaded my contact list I see people on aim and other services I've deleted along time ago.

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I've been using Trillian Astra since some of the early builds (40 or so, I think we're on 108 now), and while I admit they have been going fairly slow, they have really done some nice work on Astra. Their changelogs and bug fixes have been massive, and they have really made a gorgeous IM program. It is extremely flexible and support a large wealth of plug-ins, while still remaining relatively fast (the early builds were horrendously slow compared to today) and beautiful.

Honestly, Astra should have been public beta at least a year ago if not earlier, it has been in a perfectly usable state for quite a while now, I don't know why they waited so long.

I tried using Digsby a while back, and while I appreciated the low resources and minimalistic style, I really wasn't a fan of its looks. In order for me to use a fairly ugly program, it needs to considerably better than competing programs. I am a real fan of aesthetics when it comes to the things that run on my computer (Firefox, Trillian, RocketDock, etc.), and Trillian just has superior customization hands down.

Don't get me wrong, Digsby works great and I applaud anyone using it, it just wasn't for me.

On a side note, awesome skin bangbang, I'm definitely checking that out when I get home

Edit:

Contact List editing is one of the things Trillian has always vexed me. The latest builds have done a pretty good job at resolving most of these issues though, and I haven't had any major issues adding/removing from services.

I still keep AIM/MSN/ICQ installed for large-scale maintenance of my buddy lists though, because they offer 100% reliability, and some nifty features that can't be done in Trillian (or at least would be a waste of the developers' time).

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For the record, it appears as though Trillian doesn't save any group changes, at all. I've gone back to using Digsby. Ridiculous that the only pay to use client doesn't do something so basic that all the free clients already do.

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This was not much a of a review, but that's already been mentioned by several other posts.

Trillian Astra has been in Beta for a long time now, but I do think they are making a lot of progress. There are always new builds with details on all the things fixed. I know most applications aren't 100% perfect when they are released but Trillian appears to be taking it seriously in how it releases it's product.

Here are some more pics. Custom skins and stuff. These are things I think should have been put in the "review".

chat_window.jpg

contact_list.jpg

connections.jpg

trillian_options.jpg

Trilian has tried to give every user the ability to control their own profile you could say. It's more of an 'Astra Users Only' network feature right now but I can tell you that interaction with users who use these features is pretty cool. Even the forums can be linked to your IM to give your current status (this probably doesn't work right now on other forums but would be SWEET if it did).

forum_profiles.jpg

astra_profiles.jpg

Here's an OLD one (2 years maybe now):

blurry_comparisons.jpg

Just my few cents. There's a lot that can go into an Astra review.

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