Introduction
I use a Mac for most of my work in higher education. It’s an Wintel Mac, so I can use Boot Camp for some PC applications. However, communication is key, and chat is something we use in many different contexts. Internally, we use a Jabber-based chat client. Spark is what is the recommended client. Most of us also have our own AOL, Yahoo, G-Talk, etc accounts. There has been no really good way to integrate them all. For the Mac, Adium has been the best one. However, it doesn’t support video chat. iChat is a great client for the Mac. However, you can’t combine multiple services into one window. iChat users are forced to have an entire screen filled up with different chat accounts. It’s messy. After some Google searching and subsequent reading, I found Chax.
Brief Overview
Chax simply takes all of my IM accounts and brings it into one window. It’s a very easy download and installation. Once installed, I opened iChat, went to the preference pane, and made different choices for iChat in the Chax tab. Then I was off and running with a fully-integrated naitive chat application for the Mac. After a week, I’ve found it to work flawlessly.
Summary
I now have no need to try and keep up with Adium updates, freezes, and plug in enhancements. I also don’t need to use the Spark client which is pretty basic. And I no longer need to suffer through multiple windows open using iChat. It’s all come together with Chax. Check it out. Comments not welcome. They’re encouraged.