I've used various instant messaging applications over the years. I used the Yahoo one for a while as I have had an account with them for yonks. Then it seemed that more people I knew were on MSN, so I used that, but I've never liked their clients. A friend got me onto Jabber a few years back. This really appealed to me as it was a totally open system with a wide selection of clients. I've used Psi on Windows and Linux. It's a nice, simple interface that does the job. I later switched to Kopete on Linux as it integrates with the KDE address book. To allow me to talk to people on MSN I used a couple of services (transports) that act as gateways betweem Jabber and other networks so that I could do all my chat in one application. These have been generally good, but sometimes they have problems when Microsoft change something. This week the one I was using stopped working altogether. I'm taking this as an opportunity to drop MSN altogether. For work purposes I use Skype. It's not an open system, but it's so simple to install that I can use it with family as well.

I know MSN has all sorts of 'features' to make chat more 'fun', but I just find them annoying. speech and video can be useful, but I can get those via Skype, although video is not available on the Linux client yet and I don't have a webcam at home anyway.

So if you want to chat with me I would prefer that you use a Jabber system. The easiest way to get on there, if you use Windows or already have a Gmail account is to use Google Talk. They are using Jabber so it's very easy to use any of the clients. There are also plenty of public Jabber servers you can use or even install your own if you have the facilities.

So goodbye MSN. I just need to check around to see if I still have any references to my account there.