I use Pidgin to stay in touch with my friends and collegues through instante messaging (IM), because it easy to use and fast. I have IM accounts for MSN, AIM, ICQ and GoogleTalk, but I don't want to use the client software of each of this accounts. In the past I have used Trillian Pro, but lately starting up Trillian Pro was slow and I had to pay for it.
Looking for a replacement I stumbled upon Pidgin. Pidgin is a successor to GAIM which I have tried before. But back then I found the user interface to basic, compared to Trillian Pro. But Pidgin is much better now. The user interface is smooth and integrates nicely with my Windows Vista operating sytem. The smileys are very polished and bring a smile to my face. Pidgin is also very fast to start up. And because the user interface is localized my wife enjoys Pidgin in Dutch.
For me Pidgin is now a mandatory piece of software in my software toolbox.
