[TCH-Thomas]

I tried Trillian Astra beta a couple of months ago, or I should say "I wanted to try".
I applied for one of those test invites, downloaded it, installed it and it crashed before I got to try it and I went over to Digsby.
Since a few weeks no invites should be needed for the Astra beta testing.

Has anyone tried Trillian Astra successfully and do you like it?

[TCH-Dick]

No yet, too scared its going to break my install. Going to try it on my notebook this week.

[carbonize]

Trillian Astra is OK but I keep going back to Digsby. Just got used to the way Digsby lets me handle emails such as reporting spam. Digsby does have it's faults such as limited smileys and largish footprint but I've just gone right off Trillian especially given that Astra has taken what? 4 or 5 years just to get to this stage?

[Kevan]

I have been using Trillian Pro for a number of years and Astra (Pro) since early on in the beta program.

I love the meta contact feature that lets me group multiple accounts under one name that I can select. "Dave" for example contains his AOL, Yahoo!, IRC, MSN and GTalk accounts under one contact entry in my buddy list. Who can remember who dlb4675 @ aol might be? If I want to choose which IM service I use with him I hover the contact name until the various accounts appear below.

If you have a camera and buddies with cameras, Astra lets you video conference with the IM clients (Yahoo!, MSN, etc) of other users or a Trillian version if your buddy also runs Trillian.

Trillian was the first program that let me talk to anyone no matter what IM service they used, I just needed an account on each service and the combined buddy list in one program.


Because I never could get the online version of Astra to work as expected, I mostly use meebo.com now. For two compelling reasons

1. No software to install across multiple computers (I routinely use 3 computers)
2. IM with Chat log history is available from any computer with a browser. This allows a conversation to continue even after I go home/to work.

Both programs have the same look/feel for using IM no matter what service the users are on. I really like that feature.


I looked at Digsby but didn't see any compelling reason to try it.

[carbonize]

Trillian Astra has now been released as a finshed product but I am not going to use it. Gave it a try again and I found it just to ugly and cluttered. I'm sticking with Digsby for now despite it's flaws and bugs.

[TCH-Thomas]

I downloaded the finished product yesterday, tried it and after a (in my opinion) too long setup I gave up after spending 2 minutes looking for a settings button/link. It shouldn´t have to take a user 2 minutes to find such a basic function.

As Carbonized already said...cluttered.

I will keep it installed for a while to try it from time to time but I think I will stick with Digsby.

[TCH-Bruce]

I was having issues with the previous version of Trillian locking up my workstation at work. So I have switched to Pidgin and haven't had the problem in a week. Don't think I will waste my time testing the new Trillian.

[carbonize]

So Trillian has announced Trillian 5 which looks a lot cleaner. Nice to see they actually listen to their users. I'm hoping Trillian 5 will improve their rushed Facebook/Twitter implementations as well as their rushed email handling. I think they rushed these features as they are what a lot of people were going to DIgsby for.

[TCH-Thomas]

Trillian #5 announced already?

[carbonize]

Yeah that was pretty much my reaction as well but I think they realised that Astra was crap. Most of the work on Astra was back end stuff such as serverside storage and web IM. You can read about Trillian 5 at http://www.trillian....-trillian5.html and it's the first time in a very very long time I've actually been intrested in a Trillian version.

[TCH-Bruce]

Hmm, may have to take another look at Trillian but I've been satisfied with Pidgin since I installed it.

[flashram]

I used Trillian and am now using Triallian Astra have done since its official release, no problem at all. Works for me. I have also used Pidgin as well, but I find Trillian Astra what meets my needs, has one quirk in it though when you copy and paste and changing the font colour so the recipient can't read what you type next. Though haven't had that reported to me since a recent update. I'm using 4.2.0 was release 30 June 2010. So I think Version 5 is most likely beta talk.

This post has been edited by flashram: 30 July 2010 - 11:55 PM

[carbonize]

The beta of Trillian 5 is now available to download.