A day’s hard work (or two)

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Okay, so possibly slightly delayed – but I’ve been meaning to post this for some time now. I just wanted to show people how much effort gets put in and how much time gets spent prepping a classroom full of new PCs and Monitors.

These photos were taken from the classroom at Bedford College’s Plumbing Centre – where we had to remove the same amount of old computers (about 5 or so years old) to replace them with brand new base units and flat screen monitors.

Everything has to be taken into consideration, as the mentality (not PC) and the general attitude of the students that would be using them is not the best. So you got to think of how to locate them/tie everything down so it can’t be pinched. (A real shame but this is what the world has come to).

Two of us did this, with some help from Staff to clear the empty boxes and packaging. We then had another room to do upstairs…

Adium vs Mercury Messenger

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It is a hard decision to make when it comes to Instant Messaging for Mac. The popular Windows Live Messenger that I am currently using on one of my Windows PCs is still the best in my mind although I’ve managed to contact the Windows Live team via Twitter and they were unable to comment on when a new full version would be available for Mac.

So, with this new information in mind I went about attempting to search for the best software available for Mac OSX. I have previously used aMSN but everyone I’ve spoken to who has used it (including me) have agreed that it is painfully slow – so this was a no go straight away.

Mercury Messenger was my next choice. Again I’ve also tested this as have other people I know, although it runs on Java. And in my mind this slows it down. Starting it up takes a long time but I’ve had reports that when it’s used it runs reasonably well. Not for me though – I find the interface quite ugly and non-Mac like! It does have Web Cam support though, which is a bonus. Whether it has support for sound too I’m not too sure about.

The third choice is Adium – a fully native Mac Instant Messaging client, and although it doesn’t have support for web cam at the minute, you can use it as a client for nearly every protocol out there, and they are bringing web cam support soon…

Out of all the clients out there I’d stick with Adium on Mac for the time being. If you’re that desparate to use web cam too, use Skype – it’s also free. Or, if your friends also have Mac – use iChat, it comes free with any Mac installation and provides web cam support with sound and video as well (not leaving out the fact that you can also use it as an AIM client)

Let me know if you know, or come across any other decent IM clients for Mac.

Update: Microsoft Messenger for Mac 8 Beta is now available.

Update 2: Removed some dead links and links to incorrect sites. A lot of this software is now defunct.

Best free and Open Source Live Chat software.

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I have finally discovered what I believe to be the best Open Source (and therefore free) software to use in a Live Chat scenario! Open Web Messenger (or Mibew) developed by one or two guys is incredible.

Frequent updates and a friendly support Forum with quick responses led me to like it very quickly indeed. If you’ve been looking for something like this and don’t want to pay vast amounts for things like Live Person!

Open Web Messenger even has Live Person look-a-like skins – they have even developed a client for Windows with others in the works I do believe.

Web site link: http://openwebim.org/