msn messenger and the msn chat protocol is absolute trash, always has been, always will be. It's a great shame that icq (de facto standard before the msn bs) hasn't been able to put up a fight, meanwhile jabber just isn't very good imo. As far as I'm concerned, aim and yim are just msn ripoffs, an attempt to make money for the company rather than actually develop a decent chat client.
For email, hotmail is obviously trash, I recommend yahoo.