I think I promised to give you some ideas on open source chat clients. So, I’ll keep my word. Pidgin runs on multiple platforms (aren’t you Microsoft haters getting tired of thanking me?), accesses all the major IM networks (even simultaneously if you’d like), and supports many common features of the major chat clients.
Also, as I’ve mentioned, it’s free. Long live Open Source! OK, that sounded stupid.
Pidgin doesn’t support voice or video chat; that’s why I don’t use it. If you’re after those features, there’s another open source program for you. I’ll talk about that in the near future.