December 27, 2004

Trillian is disappointing

I paid for Trillian 2 Pro a couple of years ago. Trillian 3 was just released, and I downloaded it hoping it would fix some of the problems I was having.

It's pretty disappointing. My two big complaints:

  • It still doesn't support the Tablet Input Panel (TIP) for the Tablet PC. TIP is the feature on a Tablet PC that lets you open a pop-up input panel for handwriting when using a Tablet in slate mode. I was always disappointed that Cerulean never released an update for Trillian to support this, but releasing Trillian 3 without TIP support is just inexplicable.
  • Still no support for MSN Alerts. MSN Alerts lets you sign up for various notifications that are sent to an MSN Messenger account. I get stock price updates and Xbox Live notifications this way. For the last year, I haven't been able to use Trillian for my MSN Messenger account because of this. Still not fixed with Trillian 3.

My other problem with Trillian 2 is that file transfers on AIM are completely unreliable. They work occasionally. They often do not. I didn't try with Trillian 3, but I've read reports that file transfers aren't any more reliable -- or, in fact, are even less so.

Honestly, I can't really figure out what's better with Trillian 3. The UI is certainly different. I suppose it's better in some ways, although the new preferences panel gave me a headache trying to figure out how to navigate it.

So, at this point, I think that I'll just give up on Trillian and use Messenger and AIM separately. I don't really care for AIM (the UI is lame, and the ads are annoying), but at least it supports TIP and file transfers work.

Posted by Mike at December 27, 2004 12:35 AM