i dont like kopete, its not very customizable, i would have to go with pidgin/[old]gaim, or amsn, but you're not liking that. still, i think you should wait until the next release or two before you really judge amsn, i find it really good, end they may not have the best looking GUI, AFAIK they're planning on making it better looking, and some of the skins are rather good too. not knock it!
the only bad things are that it's a bit of a resource hog, and its sometimes dodgy if you update by svn, but thats it.
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