google talk vs hangouts

Orange Julia

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Dec 13, 2006
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I got a message on my google talk today that it will stop working on the 15th of February. I use firefox as my browser of choice and I haven't yet been able to find out whether there's a standalone or plug in hangouts for firefox. What are my options? I am running windows 7 on all my machines except for two intern machines which are running Win8 and I'd like to be able to "chat" with all of them.
 
Adding: When i go to the chrome page to add hangouts, the constant moving and flickering of that screen is fucking maddening, and I still can't seem to figure out where it installed it to. It seems to be the green quotation thingy, is that it? Why does Google make things less good? I can't sync my outlook w/ my google calendar and now this. Arg!
 

bohous

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Jul 21, 2005
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Yes, the little green "quote" icon is Hangouts. I'm unhappy about this too. Several of us (including my wife) use Talk to communicate for work during the day. I installed Hangouts maybe a month ago and agree that it's less good and haven't been using it. I'm on Chrome and haven't really had a problem with it per se (other than it defaulted to always being open on top of my browser window) but its frustrating because the chat window doesn't simply min/max from the taskbar. You have to reopen the chat window every time.
 

bohous

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Jul 21, 2005
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Hmm, Chrome blocked Pidgin as harmful.
 
 
"pidgin- 2.1.11 (1).exe may harm your browsing experience, so Chrome has blocked it"
 

Orange Julia

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Update: i managed to get it (hangouts) installed and it runs as a stand alone (as far as I can tall, as long as you launch it somehow with Chrome but i don't know how that happened,) and it isn't so bad after all, although I do prefer the chat notifications along the bottom of my monitor instead of always on top, on the side, but I like how i can easily insert pictures--Smas said the integration with google pics and hangouts was kind of cool and he was right! So, Now i'll see if I can replicate it on my home machines.
 

Orange Julia

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I think it was the chrome plug in, but i was able to run hangouts once i closed chrome, so somehow it is a standalone but i have no idea how. Magick, I guess.