[Simon]

I keep Adium running most days with a couple of ICQ and a couple of AIM accounts online. One of the ICQ accounts gets spam every day, almost always an underage girl with lots of characters that show as ASCII code in the profile and a location in Russia. Deny and block.

I have Skype but I don't keep it open. Actually the only times I've loaded it were for a few calls to MML for the radio show plus a few calls with a friend traveling in Japan. I don't have a headset for Skype so I just pair the little Bluetooth earpiece from my cell phone with my computer on the rare occasions when I use Skype.

I'd keep it open and use it more if there was a need for it, but almost everyone I chat with online uses ICQ.