I use X-Fire, MSN, and AIM. My MSN is Zephanus@hotmail.com, my AIM screen name is Zephanus, and I don't know how to check what you would add me as for X-Fire. If you add the nickname it would be Shade but I don't think you do.
msn has left me frustrated more times than AIM has so I choose AIM over msn, but I will admit that the writing tablet thing built in to msn is the greatest fucking thing ever. So many conversations just made in pictures... it gave birth to this wonderful drawing, in which my friend typed "Its a bear! " after posting it. It was too funny NOT to be saved.
I do use MSN. Or rather I use pigin, though I should really update it. MSN doesn't like to connect for me though. I often have to try a few times to get it to connect.
I was thinking the thing in the middle of what Bruce ('cause I'm cool and address him as he asks me to(also uhg?)) thought was the bear... was the bear. In that case it does look more like a badger.
Although I dislike both America and Microsoft, I still use AIM on those extremely rare occasions in which I use an instant messenger, mostly because I can't be bothered to make a new account.
I also have a GMail address, which would let me use GTalk, which uses Jabber and is therefore open and all that jazz, but no one else uses it. I shall now make a frowny face:
MSN reminds me of boring news networks like MSNBC. I don't like boring news networks, so I use AIM. If they made an IM service called the Nickelodeon or the Comedy Central, then we'd be in business.
The first two letters in the acronym. And a general lack of decent support on the Mac. And the fact that almost all of my friends use AIM, so there was never any reason to launch a whole separate application to talk to like one or two holdouts who didn't go with the flow. And iChat is a great AIM client.
Mario is right. All my friends use MSN for webcam and voice chatting, but MSN for mac doesn't have it (Well, it does now, but only for business users. Ugh). Hell, one of the reasons I was excited about getting a macbook was because I thought I'd be able to use Live Messenger through Crossover to have decent MSN. Then I found out Microsoft blocked it running through wine.
AIM gets the job done. I don't see how one client can be better than the other... they're all the same basic thing. Type something in a box, get a reply. Kinda like what I'm doing now.
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Also, that bear is rather scary.
I also have a GMail address, which would let me use GTalk, which uses Jabber and is therefore open and all that jazz, but no one else uses it. I shall now make a frowny face:
And filet mignon can be used for dog food!