Best Facebook Chat clients for Windows [Review and Ratings]

It sometime becomes difficult to chat from your native Facebook window especially when you are working on other stuffs. Opening your browsers window every time and chatting in this case it purely hectic, and that’s my own opinion. It always used to be difficult for me to update this blog and simultaneously chat with friends and that made me to find a solution for this problem and that is Facebook/Gmail Chat clients for Windows. I almost tried every chat client basically for Facebook and Gmail/G-talk for nearly 9months+ and among them these are the one I found the best.

  • Digsby
  • Skype
  • Trillian Astra
  • fTalk

Digsby

The first thing you will have to do after installing Digsby is setup an account for Digsby and this account will be used to login into the Digsby IM which later allows you to add different accounts into it. So there’s no need to login into every account (Facebook, G-talk, Yahoo etc), once you are logged into Digsby account these accounts automatically loads. Once you are done with registering the account you will be leaded to a screen where you can add your different accounts for chat as well as mail. Digsby supports AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook Chat Accounts for chatting and Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts for mail. Once you are all set you are logged into Digsby account where its all simple.

Digsby allows you to chat with your online friends right from your desktop plus it provides a better feature to check your mails without actually going to your inbox. This handy feature makes it possible to read some part of your mail and the additional features makes it possible to compose a mail, forward it or delete the mail from the inbox right from your desktop. Incase if you want to read the full mail containing attachments just click on your mail and Digsby redirects you to your inbox without the need of your username and password.

Another handy feature includes popup of Instant messages in the left corner of your desktop and option to quick reply them from there itself. This saves lot of time when you are actually multi-tasking. Digsby also allows you to keep you touched with your social network sites which includes Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn. There’s no need to log in into your Facebook account to look at your news feed, using Disby you can do that right from your desktop this is also applicable to Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn. Also everytime you get a new news feed it appears at the left of your desktop which disappears by itself and in case you need to close it just right click on that.

Digsby is provided with sound notifications, whenever your friend signs in you get a small notification at the left corner of your desktop with a sound. Also whenever your friend pings you the chat box appears on your desktop plus it saves your recent chats too.

My Rating: 9/10

Skype

Now all of us are aware of Skype, the best VoIP tool. But you may think is it anytime related with the Facebook chat? And the answer is, Yes! Skype do support Facebook too, once you are logged in into your Skype with your Skype ID you can connect the Facebook to the same.

Skype features Facebook chat in the same window and Facebook chat lies in between your Skype chats and provides the same features which Skype provides for its own text chats. Skype even offers surfing Facebook’s news feed from the Skype window in all new manner and better user interface. However not all the smileys that work in Facebook chat work here, but the smileys provided by Skype are animated and that gives more emotions sometime.

Skype also notifies you when your friends are online but the area of notification is small and they can manage showing three people’s name in a single popup box unlike Digsby where one person is restricted in one box. The moment you get an IM from your friend, Skype doesn’t bring up the whole chat window in front of your work. A small popup with your friend’s name and his brief message appears in the right corner of your desktop and you can see the whole message only if you open it. I liked this feature from Skype as it doesn’t disturb all my works. The notification sound is also pretty short but is really sweet which won’t disturb the atmosphere behind your working area like Digsby does.

My Rating: 8/10

Trillian Astra

After I used Skype for two months I decided to move to something new and I encountered with Trillian Astra. It’s basically a chat client which is completely similar to Digsby. The basic principals of working as same like Digsby and it also provides chatting through Facebook, G-talk, Yahoo, Skype, IRC, ICQ etc along with email account support for Gmail, Yahoo, MSN and social networking including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Linkedin etc.

And just like Digsby you can access everything including email, social network account and chats from your desktop. You can straightway comment on any of your friend’s activity or like for Facebook and for twitter you can RT right from the chat client.

Trillian has just got opposite layout to Digsby!, In Digsby everything appears on the left of the desktop which include notifications, friends updates, chat message etc where as in Trillian the same appears on the right side. The sound for the notification is pretty good as compared to Digsby’s sounds. The low intensity sound can make you aware even if you have got an mail too. Set status allows you to globally add status all over the social networks and for chats.

My Rating: 10/10

fTalk

fTalk is simple and light chatting client just for Facebook. As the name states the ‘f’ in the name defines Facebook, and fTalk allows you to chat with your Facebook friends. There is no integration of any other chatting service like G-Talk nor it allows you to surf your Facebook. It’s just like G-talk but for Facebook for chatting with your Facebook friends. One of the light and awesome feature of fTalk is you don’t have to create any account for fTalk, just directly login with your email address and password which you use for your Facebook account. The interface of fTalk is pretty simple, I personally felt into love with the color combination of this client and the interface is somewhat like Windows Live messenger.

It does allow you to update your status right from the chat list window. If you have a long running list of online friends a handy feature called search allows you to search your friend name from the list and start chatting with him. However like every client above it doesn’t popup if any of your friend comes online. The sound notifications are pretty cool and only work if somebody sends you a message.

My Rating: 9/10

About the author

Varad Choudhari

VarDOS, as he prefers being called, Varad is 20 and tech enthusiast. All things digital, that’s what he always think about. Not a fanboy but still loves covering iDevices and is our Jailbreak “dexterous”. Brain flooded with lots of creativity he supports genuineness, he always keeps his point right so don’t argue with him.

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