At this point would people recommend installing Pidgin or RTCOMM for general chat connectivity with different networks? From what I've read it seems that RTCOMM has better integration with the N8x0 and uses the same underlying library as Pidgin, but it also has a few more installation and operation quirks at the moment. I don't want to screw up any of my existing software just to be able to chat with someone on MSN or Yahoo.

RTComm all the way. I've had it installed since the upgrade (beta 2) was released and haven't had any problems at all with either it connectivity, or any other tablet software; the integration is awesome and completly changed the way I use both the tablet and IM. (hated having to run pidgin, leave it sitting open in the background always taking space on the limited "task bar", etc....

well , with rtcomm you cant have yourself as "invisible" and you lose some functionality that pidgin provides... i would love for rtcomm to have all the abilities of pidgin , cause i would prefer to use it if i could use all the functions i do in pidgin

I've been debating this myself, but I went with Pidgin as I use it on my other computers. I haven't tried RTCOMM yet, does the built in chat client let you merge contacts with multiple handles into the same one as Pidgin does? That's really my favorite feature.

rtcomm is way better than Pidgin.

Actually there is an "Invisible" status option in RTCOMM right now, but it doesn't seem to really be an invisble mode. Instead it marks services like ICQ, MSN, etc to a DND status. Are others seeing this??

I prefer to use the new RTCOM, it really integrates nice for how I use IM. I just wish a couple bugs would get some attention. Namely:

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2950

But it doesn't seem that other ICQ users are noticing this?

Invisible mode working well would be nice also, I'm not sure why it just switches things to DND.

Pidgin is way better than rtcomm.

Since you seem to need MSN and Yahoo connectivity, you are best to find out if RTComm has those protocols yet. I am not sure since I have never had a need for them but you might have to end up using a complex cludge through Gizmo's XXMP-MSN gateway or some other protocol gateway.

I like RTComm a lot. It seems quite reliable and integrates well into the tablet interface. It does what *I* need but might not for you easily.

Did I do something wrong when I tried RTCOMM? I went back to Pidgin because in RTCOMM, any time I typed an apostrophe, it would come out on the other end as "%apos" (or something like that) and totally confused the person I was IMing.

On the other hand, I love Pidgin ... and once I get a keyboard, I'll love it even more.

Hmmm, clear as mud so far, but thanks for the comments.