Status: Active development.

Link: http://instantbird.com/

Pros: Pleasing icons, zillions of extras (often interesting and/or high quality).

Cons: Contact list is barren and lacks even a toolbar; tab system is flawed and doesn't offer a close button, amongst other things.

Review: An interesting one, this. It appears that Instantbird supports every message theme that Adium does, from Renkoo to Snapdragon. It also supports different emoticon sets. Sadly with such a lacklustre interface, this app is not on the up and rather crashes and burns. Not to say that this will be the same forever - development seems to be extremely active indeed and it was the beta that we tested here. Here's to high hopes!