instant messaging

You can d/l either AIM, MSN, or Yahoo!...I think AIM is the best usually but MSN is growing on me. Yahoo! would be my last choice. I don't know if this is what you were looking for but I hope it helps.

ichat works w/ .mac and AIM accounts. pretty much all the big names have Mac chatware, MSN, yahoo, AIM (not needed w/ ichat). i'd look into what u want for functions. afaik, yahoo is the only one that currently offers voice and webcam support. if u just use your IMing for the usual basic functions adium should work for u, it's basically trillian for Macs. i'm not sure offhand if it supports the AV functions of yahoo however.

adium owns all

I second Adium.

i highly recommend Fire (fire.sourceforge.net) it is by far the best IM client i've ever used on a mac. it support Yahoo, MSN, AIM, and ICQ.

I too think that Adium owns, but Josiah Olson was asking for a client in which he/she could create an account. Adium is a good program that allows you to use all of the IM'ing programs in one.

I use MSN and AIM, both are good. I use Adium to access these accounts.

If your friends are using AIM go to www.aim.com and follow the instructions to get an AIM screen name. For yahoo go to messenger.yahoo.com for MSN go to messenger.msn.com and for ICQ go to www.icq.com.

Steer clear of the software for each one because none of it is very good for Mac. That's what you use Adium for.

Aim

oy! a little exploration per the web addresses given won't hurt u. all of the messengers are free, just make sure that when signing up that u bow out of any "yes email me all the crap u have!" options. (some go the other way and reqiure that u check the spam u DON'T want sent to u, so be careful). adium is free, no signing up for accounts, so long as u have the mentioned account names/services already established.

which account to sign up for? why don't u ask what your friends use and go from there? i typically use MSN and on occasion AIM. if your friends are all over the place on different services it means u would be best served by signing up for each of the services they are on and using adium to manage the accounts and chatting. for me since i only use 2 services i run the software separately.

w/ ichat u would just need to sign up for an AIM account (the official iChat accounts thru Apple are part of the .mac services which u have to pay for). u can use ichat or the actual AIM Mac software to use your AIM username. as noted before, ICHAT IS COMPATIBLE WITH AIM. so yes, u can chat with your windows buddies who have AIM or AOL as an ISP. for basic chatting u should be fine. between Mac and windows platforms there may be some disparities in the functions for each, like file transfering and sharing, but again if u r new to IMing, then this might not be a huge isssue for u.

word

Adium can be skinned to look like other things.

Trillian is far and away better than Adium and it's what I use when I'm on Windows.

You need to use Yahoo messenger for Mac or iChat.

I actually don't think the built in mic is useable for anything other than voice control over the system.