iChat how?

[Morod]

Okay, I have had my iMac for about a year and a half now. Never needed iChat before, but now I do as I am moving away from my family.
Can someone point me to a tutorial or tell me how to use it? I think AOL is involved with this and I don't have an account.
Most of the family are Windows users. Does this make a difference?
Please type slowly as I am an old fart and have never IM'ed in my life, let alone tried iChat.
I have a late 2007 Al iMac, 2.4GHz, running Leopard 10.5.7 and Safari 4.0.2. I do have high-speed (8MB) internet access.
Any help is much appreciated as to how to set this up, let other family members know I want to iChat, etc.
TIA,
Morod

 

[ChrisN]

iChat is good but most people including myself like Adium much more because it supports a lot more account types because iChat only supports MobileMe and Aol (I think). To use iChat with your family you and your family need two different MobileMe or Aol accounts. When you start up the app and sign in it will show you all of your family members that are online with a green circle next to their name, green is available, yellow is idle (I think) and red is away. If they are available you double click their name and you can start typing.

If your family wants to talk to you they will need to download aim from aim.com .

Hopes this helps a bit,
ChrisN

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

First find out what IM service your family members are using (MSN, Yahoo, AIM, etc). Relevant to this conversation, since your family is on windows, iChat is compatible with AIM. If they do use AIM, ask them for their screen name (SN).

If not, and they use MSN or Yahoo or anything else, download Adium. Whichever one they use, apply for the same IM service. A Windows Live account for MSN and a Yahoo account for Yahoo. Ask them for their screen names. Log in using Adium and add their screen name. Adium works simultaneously with almost kind of service, so you can add screen names of MSN and Yahoo, not just one or the other.

 

[Morod]

Thanks for the help/advice!
I did d/l Adium just in case. I'll make sure to ask them what their preferred method of communications is.
Morod