what sort of instant messaging does this thing use. does i hav msn.

Gaim
gizmo

Google is your friend.

every jabber-based service, which means you cannot only use your jabber account as such but also transports you've registered with. its everything you need.

Jabber and Google Talk (also based on Jabber).
With the right server, you can use the default Jabber client to chat with MSN.

Otherwise you can install GAIM

... which is compatible with MSN.

(On a general note to the more "seasoned" people in these forums: being explicit can sometimes save a newbie a lot of frustration!)

on a general note to the less "seasoned" people in these forums: using the search function sometimes save a geek a lot of frustration

But I find that "less-seasoned" users have a hard time coming up with the correct search terms, so finding something can be far harder than you might imagine.

I remember back in my tech support days, I could find certain items faster than just about anyone else. That was because I knew that some of the key words in an entry were misspelled. All I had to do was look for the misspelling and the item popped right up.

The problem is that geeks sometimes get frustrated that less geeky people don't understand simple techy things, but be reminded if you ever want the money required to have a much much better device and more money to develop with, you better make it easy to understand for the common end user otherwise both people end up losing out, get my drift?

Back to the FORUM TOPIC, you can try Gizmo, which I don't really like... I went to make a test call after installation and registering and ended up owing 23 cents for a call that didn't even work. But apparently they just added some messenger ability... but for confusing me with how an account works and charging me for trying to test my account to my own home phone really sucks big time... at some stage in the near future I will sign in, pay the 23 cents, cancel my account and never go near Gizmo ever again... Simply annoying

I tried Pidgin messenger and that was ok but for some reason it seemed to bug out when using an IRC account, but for some they may prefer Pidgin messenger over GAIM which is what I prefer for usage with MSN, YAHOO and AOL/AIM Messengers, you can also connect to IRC servers as well.