I have had a Yahoo! I.D. and account for a long time so I just downloaded the portable Miranda application:

http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/miranda_portable

Freeware and transfered an email contact to it, I knew that he was on Yahoo! sometimes, but didn't lknow if he used the Yahoo! Instant Messaging, well he was on and we talked after not talking for many years, he used to post here at L.P. years ago.

He uses Yahoo! Instant Messaging and it worked very well with the Miranda Portable application, you talk in real time typing.

I guess that I wil also try the Yahoo! Instant Messaging application even if I don't need it, you do need to sign in into Yahoo! and get an account and an email address and you can tranfer email contacts from there.

I tried to use and install Firefox instant messaging add ons, but I could not use them for some reason.

I will have to sometime experiment maybe with other instant messaging services and or programs.

http://messenger.yahoo.com/

It appeared to be a Pc to Pc communication just like the LP chatroom but with only myself and the other person.

Not bad, but there might be better ways, will have to look into the programs and services that I have found from before.

As I said, I never before tried talking to people in this way.

There were no problems, voice communications might also be posssible, I see no benefit to video communication yet, but voice might be very good to have.

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I also suggest these program:

http://cqphone.com/

Have not used this one yet, but looks really good and might be one of the best for person to person communication on the Internet.