sigh
trillian is a program which, as alluded to above, can chat through AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo - I use them all, so instead of running four programs, I run trillian, which takes up less resources than any single one of them.
It's skinnable so it's NOT ugly, and trillian pro, which you have to "pay" for, can have plugins to tell you your local weather, check your pop3 mail, run stock quotes, news headlines, etc.
It also can automate lots of common AIM functions and provides the ability to create custom keyboard shortcuts. Using the standard AIM makes me cringe after my experience with trillian.
If you only use one of them, i.e., AIM, then you don't really need it, especially if you're not interested in doing anything advanced. But if you even use two of them it makes it worth it.
I only use AIM because that's what other people use. If I had to put up with the shitty AOL-supplied interface I would vomit every time I chatted with someone.
