Shoutbox

Thanks to CocoP, I looked into QQi(nternational)/IMQQ and it's turned out to be a rather pleasant replacement. From what I can tell, it seems like a heavily modified MSN as it is (wouldn't doubt it, anyway), but running on its own individual client, with some fun extra features and a nice, free (unlike with Skype) group video call ability. Stable group chats, too, which I personally haven't experienced in a few years out of MSN. Easy image sharing, from pasted images to saved images -- even gifs. Cute, well-rendered emoticons, and a fun DIY avatar maker if you're into those things. There's apparently a screen capture button, video clip recorder, and audio clip recorder, but I haven't fully explored those features just yet. Quite a fan of the drawing tool, as well, which was a favorite feature of MSN that I haven't found in any other IM so far.

The size of the display pics took some modifying on my end, but it's fun to get a gif in there once you find one that fits without stretching, but photos work perfectly fine with the space thanks to its built in editor. I wasn't so sure about the audio quality at first, but it seems to be fine and stable. Only running at slightly more resources than MSN did, it's highly customizable and stable enough without being bloated like Skype.

The only set backs I've noticed are slow update time on contact display pictures, finicky in-chat security concerning certain links (though not blocking them so much as bringing up a hover window saying it's from an unverified source, though giving an option to open it from there anyway), sometimes having to close the chat window to get gifs and images to load up properly/quickly again, learning how to figure out where everything is, and knowing what settings to turn on and off to your comfort, -- not to mention lack of Plus! support from what I can tell, ): -- but they're all very minor in the grand scheme of things.

All in all: stable, customizable, aesthetically pleasing once you've tweaked around and slapped a fun little theme on it, and a seemingly fine substitute to Skype -- at least for me. (: Hopefully more people can hop on this and give their own opinions on tweaks or any way of modifying the program like we did previously with MSN, and just shed more perspective on its general utility and stability in general.