I''v thinking alternative for MSN and I''v heard that Jabber is good. I use gaim. But how do you actually use Jabber? I don''t need to register anywhere? Just try to sign in with a username and password and if it is free I''ll get it? Well, I managed to login some hours ago, but now I cannot anymore. Is anyonme using Jabber here? Any practical hints?

Unlike the more common IM protocols, Jabber is meant to be decentralized. There are meant to be many Jabber servers, and a user can register and login to any one of them (or even run their own) and talk to users on any other server; kind-of the IM counterpart to email. Jabber.com and Jabber.org both run publicly accessable servers, if you want to register with one of them.

A Jabber server can run one or more gateways, allowing that server to connect its clients (that request access to those gateways) to connect with other IM protocols as well (MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo!, et cetera). Unfortunately, the other IM protocols often block the access of public Jabber or mess with the protocol enough to cripple these gateways.

Thanks. Looks good after some starting problems, working well now

I just wonder why doesn''t Gaim (v0.70) show the away mesages? It just show a note "Away" but doesn''t the away reason I want to tell. I tried exodus in windows and it showed the message as well.