Software bloat is unfortunately all too common in many of the apps that we use, with two of the biggest offenders being email clients and instant messaging programs. While it’s true you could use web-enabled versions of these apps, sometimes this is just as bad because it causes the browser (no matter which you use) to use a lot of memory in short order.

If you’re willing to sacrifice a few features, here are a few apps that are super slim, super trim and barely take up any memory.

AIM Lite (Instant Messaging)
Link: http://x.aim.com/laim/

I use this personally. It surprisingly supports a lot of AIM features (including linking AIM accounts), basic video and sound and a few other things.

The best part is how little memory it uses. When idling it stays around 6,000K and at most fattens up to 12,000K.

To put this in perspective, most other IM programs will eat up at least 25,000K just sitting there doing nothing with no IM windows open.

TerrAIM (Instant Messaging)
Link: http://www.terraim.com

TerrAIM is the only AIM/ICQ client I know of that requires no installation whatsoever. It’s nothing but a single executable file. Run it and go. It idles at around 8,000K and doesn’t fatten up much larger than that.

The app is ugly by default (white text on black background with orange about the client), but fortunately there are simple themes you can download to make it look "normal", as in black-on-white.

The beauty of TerrAIM is that it could run completely from a USB stick with absolutely no problems whatsoever. One of the options in its preferences is "Save settings in a file rather than registry". What this means is that a small .ini file is written where the .exe is. All that’s requires is that both files are in the same directory.

Lastly, this client may not do multiple accounts, however, you can launch as many instances of the .exe as you want to connect to multiple accounts that way.

It doesn’t get much better than this for simple and light.

Miranda (Instant Messaging)
Link: http://www.miranda-im.org

I do believe this is the lightest multi-protocol IM client there is. It supports a ton of them. On first install it will do AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber (Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, IRC and MSN (Windows Live). From the addons area you can find just about any other IM protocol on the planet.

Miranda has two versions of its client, unicode and ANSI. The unicode is for Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/7, the ANSI for Windows 95/98/ME.

Miranda usually idles around 6,000K and usually doesn’t go past 10,000K. It is very slim on system resource use.

Microsoft Outlook Express 6 (Email)
Link: None, you already have it if you have Windows XP.

OE6 may be old and woefully obsolete, but it’s light. Being that mail is stored using individual EML files instead of a big honkin’ PST in the full Outlook version, this actually makes the client quite speedy.

You can store thousands of mails in OE6 and it doesn’t skip a beat. It works fine for IMAP and POP. The interface is simple, easy and friendly.

Possibly the only knock against OE6 is the lack of spam control; it has none. Your only option is to set up Message Rules per account or use a third-party spam utility, of which there are many.

Alpine (Email)
Link: http://www.washington.edu/alpine/acquire/

Those who have been using the internet long enough remember PINE, and some wish there were a modern(ish) variant of it for Windows. There is. It’s called Alpine.

Alpine is ugly and purposely done terminal-style. It does POP and IMAP, but it’s best suited for IMAP. It can also be used as a newsgroup reader.

For those of you thinking, "Does it do IMAP-enabled Gmail?", yes it does. But I strongly suggest you read these instructions if you want to give it a go. Read them before installing Alpine. Don’t worry, it’s not difficult. Not in the slightest. Just follow the dots, so to speak.

Sylpheed (Email)
Link: http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/

I first used Sylpheed in Linux and for a GUI-based mail client it’s very light. Sylpheed harkens back to the way Netscape Mail used to work, except packed with a lot more features, such as Junk mail control, multilingual support and a lot more. Don’t let the simple interface fool you, this client can do the job and do it well.

Claws Mail (Email)
Link: http://www.claws-mail.org/

This client can be run on many different OSes, Windows included. At first glance, Claws Mail sort of looks like a mashup between Mozilla Thunderbird and Evolution, but make no mistake, it is its own client and is packed with features.

Honorable mentions

Mozilla Thunderbird (Email)
Link: http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird

Thunderbird is a great mail client and I use it myself – but I can’t count it as light. It is a bit chunky on resource. When idling it takes around 50,000K when used in Windows XP. Granted, Microsoft Outlook (full version, not express) takes up way more memory than that, but for a freebie I wish t-bird were a bit lighter.

aMSN (Instant Messaging)
Link: http://www.amsn-project.net/

This is for connectivity to the Windows Live messaging service, a.k.a. MSN. Nice client and all but could be a bit lighter. aMSN’s best feature is that the Windows and Linux versions are almost identical to each other – and that’s good.

Pidgin (Instant Messaging)
Link: http://www.pidgin.im

Pidgin is one of the best multi-protocol messengers that exists. It connects to everything and it’s easy. But it’s gained weight over the years and lost its lightweight status some time ago. It’s not nearly as chunky as others but it used to be less memory intensive.

Opera Mail (Email)
Link: http://www.opera.com/mail/

The email client within the Opera web browser is seriously good. Once you get past configuring an account (the hardest part) it’s super-easy to get along with. The only problem is that Opera is a modern web browser and like its counterparts takes up a bit too much memory to be considered light.

What do you use that’s light and speedy?

Let us know in the comments. Even if what you use is Linux and not Windows, chime in anyway.