Trillian has been around a while now, on 1 July 2005 Trillian turned 5 years old... Happy Belated Birthday Trillian :)  It's also been a while since I've covered it, the last time I touched base was back in 2004 when Trillian released version 2.012 which was yonks ago. The current version is 3.1 which has been out since November 05, some things have changed, some not, and while another version is in the wings I'm going to step back and take a look at what I've missing out on by not using Trillian Pro v3.1 more than I should have...

November 2004 saw the release of Trillian 3.0, version 3.1 tip toed out the door a year later and despite some rumours (or perhaps frustrations) circulating, Trillian has not ceased production nor development. If you swing by the Cerulean Studios Blog and check out the December 5th, 2005 posting you'll see that the next version of Trillian is in the production wings but just when it will be released and what it will contain escapes us all...

Trillian still comes in two flavours, Basic and Pro, Pro will set you back US$25 but in return it will give you Real-time Video Chat (Video Filter Effects, Image Capture, Video Capture, Emotiblips™, Picture In Picture, Side By Side, Full Screen Video), network support for Jabber® (this includes GoogleTalk), Novell® GroupWise® Messenger and Rendezvous you'll also get History Viewer, Floating Contacts, Animated Emoticons, File Transfers, Display Pictures, Plugin Support and much more.... you also get 1 year of upgrades, technical support, unlimited use of the version you purchased (one would hope so ;) access to patches relevant to your purchased version and access to the Member's Only forums... where at the moment you can check out the thoughts and feelings of other Pro users who eagerly await the next version....

If you've never heard of Trillian here's their product overview which sums it all up...
"Trillian™ is a fully featured, stand-alone, skinnable chat client that supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and IRC. It provides capabilities not possible with original network clients, while supporting standard features such as audio chat, file transfers, group chats, chat rooms, buddy icons, multiple simultaneous connections to the same network, server-side contact importing, typing notification, direct connection (AIM), proxy support, encrypted messaging (AIM/ICQ), SMS support, and privacy settings. 
Without stealing your home page and with no other included software, pop-ups, or spyware, Trillian provides unique functionality such as contact message history, a powerful skinning language, tabbed messaging, global status changes (set all networks away at once), Instant Lookup (automatic Wikipedia integration), contact alerts, an advanced automation system to trigger events based on anything happening in the client, docking, hundreds of emoticons, emotisounds, shell extensions for file transfers, and systray notifications."

Once again all I am really interested in (not being rude :) is the compatibility, that being, if I use Trillian to talk to someone using Yahoo! Messenger or MSN Messenger, AIM, ICQ etc, what features do I still have available... and what do the smileys look like ;)

Here's a quick summary of the features and compatibility based on Trillian's Unification Features Summary and Comparison chart

	Yahoo! Messenger	MSN Messenger	ICQ	AIM
Basic Messaging
Privacy Settings
File Transfers
Group Conferences			-
Display Pictures
Mobile Messaging
Mail Notification			-
Full Native Status Support
Audio Chat			-
Video Chat			-
	Yahoo! Chat Rooms		SecureIM	SecureIM Direct Connections

There is smiley support, but limited, and animated smileys are only available to TrillianPro users, the in's and out's will be covered under Trillian Pro v3.1 to Yahoo, Trillian Pro v3.1 to MSN, Trillian Pro v3.1 to ICQ and Trillian Pro v3.1 to AIM

Trillian™ version covered:
Trillian version 3.1
File name: trillian-v3.1.exe
Download Size: 8.58mb
Download: http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/downloads/
System Requirments:
Microsoft Windows 98, 2000, ME, XP Home or Pro

64MB of RAM

30MB Hard Drive Space

Trillian™ General Links:
Homepage ~ http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/
Comparison Chart ~ http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/compare/
Buy Trillian Pro ~ https://www.ceruleanstudios.com/buy/buy.php
Support ~ http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/support/
Forum ~ http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/forums/
Cerulean Studios Blog ~ http://blog.ceruleanstudios.com/