
Welcome
Along with being cross compatible with different networks, the Pidgin application is also available for many different Operating Systems; as well as the obvious Windows version, the developers have provided support for Solaris, SkyOS, Qtopia, UNIX, Linux and even the AmigaOS.
All the standard features you would come to expect such as contact organiser, custom smileys, file transfers and group chats are present. The only slight criticism that I would have is that it doesn’t support video and voice chat however my assumption is that these protocols are difficult to integrate in to an application that has been designed to be compatible with dozens of networks and half a dozen different Operating Systems. Hopefully this lack of functionality will be addressed in future releases
Camputer
Buzz is an extension of the Google Mail service offered by Google which the Internet giants hope will lure users away from alternative services such a
Google Mail initially created shockwaves when first introduced as they offered a huge 1GB of storage space for messages and attachments compared to most of its competitors who at the time offered a feeble 2 to 4MB. Today they offer a huge 7GB as standard however times have moved on and alternative providers such as Yahoo Mail and Hotmail also now offer an almost unlimited amount of storage space free of charge.
Pidgin is completely customisable; the preferences dialog box provides an area where you can define every conceivable option including the interface, sounds, network connection, chat logging and your default availability status. In terms of appearance you can also change the font type, size and colour, formatting along with installing new themes which change the appearance of smileys and status icons. An additional option to install themes in order to change the actual user interface would be welcome as the default interface may be a little dull and unintuitive for some users.