MSN Addicts are supported (another win)!

One of my son's key concerns, when we installed Ubuntu onto his PC, was "can I still use MSN". After all without MSN he'd have no social life! I was pretty sure it was possible so I said yes, then had to find out how. It turns out its really simple, the Pidgin application is installed by default. All that was required was to open Pidgin enter the account details then it works with MSN, it even tells you about the status of your Hotmail account the same as MSN Messenger.

There was only one minor hiccup. The next day it was "Daaad... MSN's not working, I opened Pidgin but nothing happened". On investigation I quickly saw what was happening, Pidgin opens minimised as an icon on the top panel, so unless you are looking for the icon, it appears as if nothing has happened. Panic over, all's fine.