Oi, I am in the same boat, and tried most of them you listed, eventually settled on the Exodus client, I think its at v 0.9.1 or something.

I would say give that one a whirl, to me it has the smoothest interface, and overall it seems to be the most “together” of the bunch, but neosmt is pretty ill, and Psi and Miranda IM are decent…

Anyways Jabber = Rocks.

I use Trillian, but must admit I don’t use it enough to pay for it.  I don’t need all the extra bells and whistles.  I would like to find something simple, that will always connect me to everyone.

I use the pro version of trillian. I hesitated about buying it, but have to say that it is well worth it. The jabber client plug-in is solid and works very well.

If you can’t bring yourself to shell out some skrilla for Trillian, than Exodus is probably the best free jabber client out there.

I use Trillian Pro or Miranda IM, depending on whether I’m at home or university (Trillian is bizarrely blocked here). Exodus is good too though.

I agree with submunition - I use Exodus at work and find it to be very stable and, not being an IM freak, it has all the features I need.

You know, when I first read that comment, I could have sworn we were talking about the Bible again ...

Psi. I’m a standards compliant kind of guy and Psi sticks to the JEPS and standards. I like it because of the cross-platform usability (menus, look and feel is the same all across the board - linux, mac, windoze). But if I were to go for a “all the bells and whistles and don’t-really-needs-but-are-cool-to-haves” and Windoze only client, I’d definitely go with Exodus. I have before.