Originally Posted by moondog

You can try downloading the G talk client as an alternate strategy, but I've found this approach almost as useless as using gchat within gmail.

I don't really give a rat's behind about gchat because 99% of my friends are on qq/skype/msn, but I have one contact in the US who is only accessible via gchat (sms too, but he responds faster to gchat), who I'm trying to get in touch with before the end of the weekend... pretty frustrating.