What is the best IM Client?

[Hellmasker]

amsn says it supports enctypted login, which i took to mean the new msn ssl logins. kopete also supports it.

from what i can tell, gaim could support it but hasnt yet because of legalities. It would probably be eaasy enuf to take the msn plugin from another program and use it for giam tho

[blue]

I use amsn because I'm lazy and it was the first one I installed... Although it is lacking the images that accompany your chat, it does have a nice feature that it warns you when people open a chat with you - BEFORE - they send the first message. Perhaps unnecessary but I still like it. I haven't had any stability issues on RH9/Gnome so that's a bonus.

Do the other IM clients have extra funky features as above? Lets here some of the more useful ones. It'll save me having to install all of them... work prevents me from too much play.

[Hellmasker]

gaim support text replacement on both incomign and outgoing messages.

eg if i write a word in wrong, (wirte instead of write) and i have listed the word and its replacement in the dictionary it will correct the word b4 it sends it.

It can also do the same for incoming messages if all ur mates are really bad typists.

and using the same thing, it has scripts that can convert everythign u say into 1337 speek, and a coupel other pointless things, or with a few downloads even limited (word for word) translation into other languages.