Several months ago I was in a meeting and a question came up where the other person needed to jump on my computer and chat with a developer. Their preferred medium was MSN (for what reason, I don’t know). She had to go through the configuration of the MSN Client, d/l an update, login and 20 minutes later she was chatting–good work. Then I had a chattable Q that came up, I jumped on www.gmail.com and fired away my question (20 seconds).
Now that Gmail has AIM embedded in their interface, change all of your online friends to gtalk or aim and punt all of your MSN contacts–I don’t care what LIVE has to offer, MSN is a pain.