No matter how cheap phone calls from landlines and mobiles get, it’s always going to be far more costly than instant messaging, especially when communicating with friends and family abroad. The great thing about instant messaging is that it enables
you to talk to people on a one-to-one basis as well as in groups. Unfortunately, there are so many different
messaging clients available it’s pretty unlikely that all your friends
and family will be using the same one.
Miranda
0.8.23 enables users to communicate with almost anyone, irrespective
of IM network. All status icons are included for other networks and
your contacts are consolidated onto a single list. Unfortunately the
application doesn’t support all advanced features that ship with some IM
tools, but it’s free and you have the convenience of using a
single application.
Miranda
0.8.23 link.