Finally Upgraded to Trillian 3.x

I posted a while back about my reticence to upgrade to Trillian 3.0 (I won’t rehash my reasoning in this post); I decided to hold off until they did a minor point release, which recently they did (v3.1).  The upgrade went relatively smoothly; here are my recommendations for the upgrade:

• In your \%program files%\Trillian directory, create a new directory called ‘backup’ and copy everything in the root trillian directory to it (Trillian is self contained, I believe the only registry entries it creates are some keys that relate to uninstallation stuff, and I’m not 100% sure about that).  If you get a failed install, you can just dump the contents of the backup folder back to the trillian directory and be up and running.
• Do the same thing in \Documents and Settings\<username>\Trillian, again for the same reasons.
• Back in the root trillian directory, delete everything from the skins and plugins directories (some of the older plugins will cause the new version of Trillian to crash as I found out the hard way).  You can add the plugins one by one after the upgrade; most of the older ones are compatible.
• Install Trillian.  In some cases, before adding your connections again (I had to re-add them manually, i.e. typing in username/password for each IM service) make sure you enable each service in the plugins tab of the (vastly improved) settings page.  Trillian should pick everything else up (groups, contacts, and about 95% of your previous settings) automatically.

My webcam *still* doesn’t work with MSN, but from reading over the Trillian forums, there have been vast improvements in this area.  File transferring is also greatly improved (except for a couple of friends of mine who use GAiM, the transfer fails).  Other stuff:

• Viewing message history is more than just a text file now, there are search options, a timeline where you can specify dates to see specific conversations, an assets tab showing all file transfers (or anything you choose to track)…it’s a lot like the history feature of the new MSN, very nice indeed.
• I mentioned the revised admin piece above, you really have to see it to believe it.  Gone is the horrid tree-like view of previous versions, it’s much more like Control Panel in Windows.  Whenever you make a change that needs a restart of Trillian, you are given the option to reload (and it preserves your status, i.e. if you were set to away, it logs you in as away when it restarts).
• There is a fantastic Royale theme that aligns nicely with the corresponding theme for Windows.  Actually, all the new themes are great.
• The ability to view avatars next to contact names in the contact list, again a lot like the newest MSN Messenger.
• If you choose an avatar that’s too big for your account, Trillian will automatically resize it for you to fit…a very nice touch.
• And all the other benefits I mentioned in my previous post.

Aside from the webcam issue (which really isn’t a big deal), I’m very pleased.  The upgrade was relatively painless, my previous version’s message history was carried over intact, and the new GUI upgrades are well worth it.  I’ve tried virtually every integrated IM package out there, and Trillian is still leaps and bounds beyond any of them.  Highly recommended.