Pandion

If you don't want to be nagged at work by your messenger contacts, you should use a different instant messenger. Pandion is an excellent solution for many situations. The main reason is that it works on the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), which is an open standard for real-time communications. The application supports any XMPP server, like Google Talk and others, which means that you can import contacts from other instant messaging services. It also provides various features, including a tabbed chat window, the possibility of creating or joining conferences and more.

Pandion is free and open source and it is available in numerous languages. The application is known to work on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7. It can be installed in a few moments, it does not ask for too many resources and you don't have to install any prerequisite tools.

Pandion looks and feels like other popular instant messengers. Once you install the application, you have to create an online account and sign in. The account can be created on the desktop interface, by following a wizard's interface. You can also sign in right away, without waiting for any email confirmations.

Contacts are listed on the main interface and you can organize them in different groups, rename them and more. To add a new contact, you just need to specify a username and a network, on a separate window. You can also join numerous conferences. The available chat rooms can be found and filtered on a different window and it takes a single click to join one instantly, without any restrictions.

The application allows you to create your own conferences. You can invite contacts to your conference, specify a chat subject and make various settings. It is possible to make the chat rooms persistent, publicly searchable, password protected and more. You can join or create multiple conferences and display them on the same window, on separate tabs.