I wonder if they are they retiring the old messenger protocol as well. Currently, I use Pidgin with my Live Messenger account, but perhaps that will stop working come March 15th.
Until this day Trillian 2-3 still beats any IM-client i've ever tried. It's fast, has plenty of features, plugins and is customizable in just the right places.
Back then using a third party client was a must since the official Windows Messenger client was completely useless, same story for icq and aim. I wouldn't say the official Live messenger client is good today, but it is good enough to make me not crave for a 3:d party client, I simply don't care anymore.
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