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Instant Messenger Memory Usage

Now that yet another messenger has been launched (Google Talk) I wanted to compare them. Not the functionality, they basically all do the same: allow you to chat with friends. Ok, some of these messengers have some nice features, but these come at a price, a price called memory usage. I checked the memory usages of 4 messengers:

• Gaim 1.4.0 logged on to 2 msn accounts and 1 yahoo account
  
• MSN Messenger 7.5 logged on to 1 msn account, running with messenger plus extension and a lot of custom emoticons, weemees and winks (a configuration used by many because it is so nice to have)
  
• Google Talk first beta version logged on to 1 gmail account
  
• Yahoo Messenger 6.0 logged on to 1 Yahoo account

This screenshot was taken of the Sysinternals tool Process Explorer, the first column shows the process executable name, the second column shows the Private Bytes used, the third column shows the Virtual Size used and the last column shows the Working Set used.

If you look at the virtual memory usage you see huge differences, MSN being the 'winner' with a whooping 320MB (yes Megabytes). The peak working set usage (that's real RAM) was over 230MB. This means that when you switch away or minimize the application this memory can potentially be paged out. To me this seems like a lot of memory for just a chat program. If you only use IM to chat maybe a switch to another messenger is a good advise or use something like Gaim or Trillian that supports more than one IM format (including msn, yahoo, jabber, icq/aim). Gaim only supports text chat, Trillian can also do videochat with msn, aim and yahoo. Draw your own conclusions.

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