May 24, 2007
Combine MSN Messenger and QQ using Pidgin IM
I mentioned the Chinese IM service QQ before, and how there’s, like, a ba-zillion people using it here in China.
Now I reluctantly stopped using QQ a while back for two reasons: 1) It’s a little resource heavy, and 2) My computer has about as much processing power as the sitting American President.
But I just found this interesting IM client called Pidgin, which you can use to consolidate all your Instant Messaging platforms such as MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AOL, ICQ, and oddly enough, QQ.
I’ve installed the program, and it works pretty smoothly. It’s pretty light, and I find runs way better than QQ. You can a preview of Pidgin in the picture here. Notice that my QQ contacts are sorted on the top, while my MSN contacts are listed just below. Sweet, huh?
I’m having some trouble trying to get it to run a Chinese IME, but I’ll keep working on that and keep you updated.
UPDATE: Go to Tools> Preferences> Conversations, then uncheck Buddy Icons.
And then go to Tools> Preferences> Smiley Themes, then select None. Turns out program was transforming Chinese text for emoticon shortcuts, and displaying them as 
But in the meantime, I have a ton of old friends who I’ve lost touch with sending me messages via QQ/Pidgin here today. It’s nice to see them all again.
Pidgin used to be GAIM, before it was bought out by AOL. I agree, it’s pretty kick-ass.
ya. There are a few other clients like this one out there.
Namely Trillion.
But Trillion only supports a few services, and QQ isn’t one of them.
I believe there are Chinese versions of this kind of software.
But I’ve yet to track any down.
http://im.qq.com/tm/download.shtml
One of my friends just sent me this, which looks interesting.
yeah Tecent Messeger is recommended if u find a complete version of QQ too heavy,also u can try Coral QQ which is less resource costing.both of them can be connected to the QQ network.btw,check this out,it may look familiar
http://www-c2.meebo.com.cn/index.html
That looks interesting. I’ll have to give that a try. After speaking with old friends on qq a few days ago when I originally posted, the QQ part of pidgin doesn’t seem to be able to sign in.
Why is it that all my tips seeming to fail like two days after I post them?
It’s like I’m cursing them.
Yes, Tencent has banned other client to login their server these days. But I think a new QQ plugin for Pidgin will login again soon.
Hmm, a friend of mine uses Pidgin and can’t log into QQ, perhaps this ban is the reasons. For some reason, I can still log in thru Miranda.
It wasn’t actually bought out. Gaim (not GAIM) was sued by AOL for using the trademarked AIM in their name, so they needed to change it. But AOL never paid for anything.
I think pidgin is pretty sweet.
Better than many other IM programs.
does anyone know if pidgin for etch is still being rejected by the qq server? also, has anyone had sucess running qq.exe under wine/linux?
eva is a KDE client that uses qq
http://sourceforge.net/projects/evaq/
The qq login error in Pigdin should be patched with the release of version 2.2.2
http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/783#comment:32
Looking at the last message from one of the devs it looks like they might never fix it.
i followed the instruction at the top of the page, but i am still getting jibberish where there should be chinese on my pidgin messenger. i am using vista. does that change anything? anybody with some ideas?
If QQ is a bit resource hungry, I suggest you try Tencent Messenger:
http://im.qq.com/tm/
It’s lightweight fast and very pleasent to work with.
this QQ plugin (in pidgin) is just a windows backport of the slick mac osx multi-IM (also based on gaim) called ADIUM.
do yourself a favour – get a mac – save your time & your money being wsted on the dead end that is windows!
@zahadum I already did. Adium is sweet, and so is MacOS!
I am getting Null instead of text in qq-Pidgin
SAME HERE.
USING PIDGIN 2.5.1 UNDER WINDOWS XP.
I CAN LOGIN TO QQ JUST FINE.
BUT EVERYTHING I SEND/RECEIVE SHOWS UP AS (NULL).
Pidgin is cool. And light weight. Worked on my AMD dual core 64 bit with 32-bit windows xp