Undoubtedly the best is Pidgin.

My machine lags like crazy when I use Windows Live Messenger regardless of whether I am running Windows XP Professional or Windows Vista Ultimate. If I set Windows Live Messenger to load on startup, it will add about 5 seconds to my boot time, and if I set it to automatically sign in on startup, it will add about 20 seconds to my boot time because of the 'MSN Today' or whatever it's called popping up, which of course is easy to disable.

Pidgin connects to so many different protocols and supports most of the MSN protocols features (minus video and audio). I have an AIM, ICQ, Google Talk and YIM account as well as my MSN account, so when I feel like using these, I will always use Pidgin.

If I am running Fedora then obviously Gaim/Pidgin is the best choice, and for me it is the only choice; it loads fast, is extremely easy to use, and supports all the protocols I could ever need.

I've never liked using Messenger Plus so I don't miss having coloured names.

And aMSN is just ugly and messy. Aesthetics are very important. Pidgin satisfies, nuff said.

I guess I just prefer the familiarity of MSN.

Naa it's nothing like it. Its a web based version of MSN that to be perfectly honest sucks. I think its too tacky with all its ajax. Ok ok, ajax and stuff is ok, but some things can get overkill... Like Live Hotmail, too much there to be any use lol

Yuck.

LOL, I find browser messengers simply annoying. Except GTalk, but that's annoying cos it comes up while I'm using the program version.

Patchou made Messenger Plus! compatable with the Beta now. I wouldnt have installed it except for the fact that names with code in are just annoying (too much to read lol).

Works quite nicely, except for the fact that plus! has made the beta slightly unstable whereas before it was perfectly stable lol.

I have no choice other than Pidgin right now. I can only use my Fedora Core 6 box since selling the PC.

Since when is any Microsoft stuff stable...?

Fine then, relatively stable...

Oh, and 3.1 was

Yeah, but that was before they got greedy...

Very good point.

Now to run Windows properly you need an infinite budget just to spend on the software, let alone any hardware to run it

Or an emulator...