apps/Gaim

Gaim is a multiprotocol IM client that supports pretty much all protocols and has a very quick development cycle. I've finally adopted it on my Windows laptop as well, mostly due to the fact that it has zero nagware features and (with a little tweaking) is mostly unobtrusive.

• GTK-Wimp, a GTK theme that adopts the Windows look and feel on XP.

• In order to maintain your sanity while using Gaim on a Windows machine with ClearType, edit c:\Program Files/Common Files/GTK/2.0/etc/pango and remove the tahoma alias. Otherwise, the GTK menus and fonts will be remapped to sans serif and look hideous.