Brosix Personal IM is a free private and instant messaging system. It is easy to use and has many of the features and bells and whistles you would expect from most modern Instant Messaging services and a few more, such as a whiteboard, secure file sharing, and desktop sharing. Most importantly, Brosix is secure, encrypted and private. It is also multiplatform (Windows, Linux, Mac, iPhone, Android, and even a web client.)
Given how much time I personally spend on the Internet, I am always looking for new or better ways to communicate with my friends and business contacts. Brosix is an instant messaging client similar to many of the other popular messengers out there, with an eye toward business and collaboration as their hook for new users.
The personal edition of Brosix is entirely free to download and use as much as you like, and get your friends and relations into using it as well, of course. There isn’t much point to having an instant messenger without people to send messages to. There are more different instant messaging services and programs out there than countries, now.
As far as the personal vs. enterprise editions are concerned, the biggest difference seems to be access to a private network (which would be important for a big company, I would think) and using the standardized Brosix network. So, for personal use, it really is free and doesn’t limit your use of features other than the private network functions. That’s pretty impressive for an IM program that is so relatively new on the scene. The ground for IMs has been thoroughly tilled by companies like Yahoo! and Google and all the others out there, so it’s nice to see Brosix taking a cue from them while trying to push the envelope of progressive feature development as well. Offering the option for private networks is a good idea if you want to target businesses as your customers but the fact is that businesses are run by people and that’s where the personal edition of Brosix really comes in, supporting those who use it in business on a personal level. One of my favorite features of Brosix is that it can be run from a USB drive without installation. This makes it easier to keep Brosix as your personal IM choice, since you won’t have to rely on whatever happens to be installed on the local machine.n instant messaging client similar to many of the other popular messengers out there, with an eye toward business and collaboration as their hook for new users. The personal edition of Brosix is entirely free to download and use as much as you like, and get your friends and relations into using it as well, of course. There isn’t much point to having an instant messenger without people to send messages to. There are more different instant messaging services and programs out there than countries, now.
Feature-wise Brosix is loaded with most of what you’d expect in a modern IM program including things like video, voice and text chat, as well as slightly more uncommon but still very useful options like screen sharing and side by side browsing between users. While neither of these is actually a new concept or feature of IMs, Brosix implements it with a minimum of fuss and works to an acceptable level in most cases. There are still some occasional issues like not being able to load the same page at once on two systems for whatever reason (usually a scripting problem), but for the most part I found it to be pretty error free, which is another example of attention to quality from the developers. I could see the Brosix personal IM program becoming a pretty popular one, assuming that enough businesses adopt it to have a solid user base. In any case, it’s certainly worth a look if you’re shopping for IM programs and/or just want to try something new.
Since it is geared toward creating a virtual office kind of setting, where ideas can be shared and explored and expanded through things like the whiteboard feature, Brosix is ideally suited for any kind of collaboration project, whatever it may be. Whether you’re trying to organize a guild’s raiding team or trying to expand neighborhood communication, Brosix has something to offer to make group efforts easier. However, I would not recommend it as your primary mode of instant communication simply because it doesn’t allow communication between itself and other IM services. Anyone you want to contact on there must have their own (free) account with Brosix. This means that there is a searchable directory of users, which makes your friends easier to find, once you know they have an account. Hence, it is meant more for collaboration and business purposes than for everyday social communication, but what it does, it does well. Until next time, my friends.
Get Brosix for Windows, Mac, Linux or Android, iPhone here.
