For OP and others who may stumble upon this thread, it might be good to clear up a few things: For each protocol, there are often several implementations to choose from on the N900, esp. MSN (see 9000s post). Jabber, Google Talk, gtalk and XMPP are all the same thing. Jabber was developed as an open standard for IM, later renamed XMPP. Google adopted XMPP for their IM service. XMPP/Jabber also provides voice and video calls, much like Skype. Even facebook chat uses XMPP (a subset, I believe) I agree wholeheartedly with several other posters: N900's Jabber/XMPP implementation is very good and stable, uses less battery than e.g. Skype. When spanner speaks of "XMPP gateway", this is a service where you sign up, and at this service enter account info for all your IM accounts. You connect to the gateway with a single XMPP account/connection, but can "talk" to all your contacts on the various services. From your use case I guess all you need is an XMPP/Jabber Account for each of you. There are many, many free Jabber/XMPP services out there, but arguably the easiest you could do would be to sign up for Google accounts (gmail accounts) and set these up in the N900s (There is an account type "Google Talk" on the N900, and also "Jabber"). Note: for "chatting" over XMPP/Jabber from the PC, there is a plethora of choices e.g. Google's own, and "Spark", and clients more geared towards voice/video. Just search. :-)