ya i have to say i use skype pretty begrudgingly for voice/video 'cause it's just std now. their clunky interface just tilts me though. IM i tend to try to limit to gtalk (jabber protocol), and for just a select few, msn. i connect to msn and gtalk via miranda now so i don't actually care too much what network i'm on. was on pidgin for ages and then realized how uncustomizable the contact list is, so i switched to miranda which allows me to keep a really tiny contact list window in the corner of my screen.