Is there a way that would allow me to set my status to idle instead of away?

Afaik, the only way to appear idle is to leave msn change to away by its self.

Crap

One question. Why would you want to do this? You could just change your stats to AWAY?

Yea well, but somehow that can be seen by people using the mess patch...

Yes I know but idle is if your letting MSN do it. But if you dont want to wait for IDLE just change to Away

Well, if you have a program that can capture packets (Like Window Pack Editor maybe or something like that), turn it on, let it listen to MSN send an idle message once (just make the idle 1 min so you dont wait long).  Then you will have what MSN sends to say it is idle.  Now, you can use the program to send this command whenever you want.  And since Messenger didnt actually send it, you can still use your computer without it sending the online packet to the server... hope that made sense

EDIT: Ok, I got the packet for you, you'll have to do it yourself though to get the rest of it, but just so you know it starts with "CHG 106 IDL" then a number then your email and other random stuff (dont know enough about MSN to tell you what it is)  It may not be what you want, but hope it helps..

Oh yeah, once you find this packet (if you are using WPE), then just right click on it and set it to "Add to send list".  Now the only thing you have to do though is figure out which socket messenger is using cause you have to send the packet using that socket.

Hope some of this made sense to you

It IS possible to go change Idle, since I've seen someone who's signed in and went Idle a split-second later.