Since there's no public build of Trillian Astra available yet, I decided to try the new Gaim v2.0 beta to consolidate my AIM and Google Talk accounts for the time being.

[Sidenote: I'm still running Windows Live Messenger separately since I frequently use features like Shared Folders that are only supported by the official client. WLM is actually still my favorite IM client overall, despite some of the minor gripes that I had with it.]

Anyway, Gaim 2.0 has been holding up well so far. The default layout still includes many of the same old boxy, Linux-like widgets and graphics, which are a bit of an eye-sore, especially on Windows Vista. Fortunately, I find most of these buttons and toolbars redundant and just hide them anyway. Also, most of the graphics are just PNG images stored in the Gaim directory, so they're easy to replace with better looking ones. With a little bit of Photoshop-fu, I've customized mine so that it's pretty minimalistic and clean, and I'm quite happy with it so far. :)