MSN Messenger & Alternatives?

You'll need an applemac.

ichat AV, hook up a camera and you are in business. And yes its used extensively in business.

You'll need an applemac.

Thanks, but no thanks!
John

Well its your choice!

Messenger does video conferencing -- or at least you can certainly do video conversations although I am not sure if you can do it multi-way. No doubt Yahoo will do it as well.

The classic independent freeware IM is ICQ and the other one with a big following is Trillion which, uniquely AFAICT, supports all the major protocols so you only need one client.

Probably a better alternative though, if you can do without the video, is VoIP and current Official Interweb Next Big Thing and free telephony sensation Skype. It's completely free and now does voice conferencing.

Matthew

And here I thought the next big thing was WiMAX.

Besides Trillion, there's also Jabber as an open source alternative.

Matthew, how does Skype's sound quality compare to MSN or Yahoo IM clients? I've been skeptical and thus hesitant to download yet.

I haven't used it personally, but, friends who have swear by it.

I think it helps a great deal in terms of stability of the connection, lack of "drop outs", etc. if you both have broadband.

Matthew

MSN 6.1 does audio and video, and I've had it running between me and 3 other folks and it was fine - a little slow on the refresh but acceptable.

andy c!

MSN 6.1 does audio and video, and I've had it running between me and 3 other folks and it was fine

I thought you could send your webcam to only one recipient within a session? Or do you mean you are connecting across more than one session? Are you using a firewall? I can't get the audio functionality to work and suspect it is being blocked by Zonealarm.
John