Have you used Pidgin?  How does this compare?

I like my Meebo and the Meebone desktop app.

I use digsby as an aim client because it is really easy to skin. However, I have really been looking forward to trillian astra because i've seen some great skins for that too.

Only reason I will not use pidgin is it is a security risk at work and not allowed. Astra is allowed and so is another irc I have for my pda. All others are blocked to include MSN live messenger! I got everything I need with astra - oh ya plus I've gotten a redesign or Modified version for my Iron Key and it works very well even at work in the domain. Usually I so busy it is hard for me to find time to use it for like Stardock irc and as such. But we have our own little group of employees that use irc with celphones and pda. Thus we can find each other without a phone call. I like astra!

Been using Astra for about a year or more (alpha and up).  If you use multiple services it works very well.  Not pleased with the facebook chatting (it dont work).  But IRC/AIM/MSN/GOOGLE CHAT all work seemlessly in 1 list of names.   I like it.  But try it out and see.

The most anticipated application on the web, this thing has been alpha for years...  lol..

I have been using pidgin for many years because the old trill skins sucked and never matched my windowblind scheme so i went to pidgin because of it, I am going to give it a shot and see what the hold up was for sooooo long.  with pidgin i was able to connect to all my chats including FB and Myspace, it seems that Astra has this too...

same thing here, i am a licenced owner of trillian pro 3 and was invited to participate in the astra tests from the very start. Astra is a very very good application and all the different plugin work flawlessly.

visually Astra is very nice, the notifications are great too..

Okay . I gave it a shot. As I was having problems with webcam in Digsby and Meebo. Here's my take.

It's sleek. Nice lay out. The add-ons seem to work a lot better than they do in Digsby. (Twitter, etc)

But alas...webcam is good only if your contacts have Yahoo Messenger or Trillian. And I have to say..I am quite confused about what you get with the Pro-version. Finally..it took me a long time to find the webcam button at all and it is severely lacking in 'Help', tutorials, etc.

I'll hang onto it for now as I have become more of a user of IM than I have ever been in the past. Hopefully, the updates for this will sove a lot of these minor issues.

*it would be nice, though I don't know if possible, if they make this skinnable in the final version. There's a lot to play with.

MSN ftw.... Trillian emotes are weak... weak i say!!

I ended up having to install Live Messenger. I can't even begin to tell you what a bad taste that left in my mouth. I have never cared much for messenger and it's continued efforts to be so invasive upon my system. And I won't even get started on all the m@therf$@&ing advertisements. You would think they could afford to leave that crap out and just make a clean app. As soon as I can work out the video bugs with Digsby, Live Messenger is gone, gone, gone.

I would love to see the folks at Mozilla come out with a messenger service.

I wish someone would help me get IRC working in Trillian so I can access stardock IRC from there. 

Here you go Red Neck...

and channel settings are here... click the settings button to see this and much more...

Thanks, Dude!!!!