Well in terms of he messages remember hitting the I key is the shortcut to open AIM. Its really quick and reliable but the buddy limit and the fact that you can't you can't view away messages is dissappointing.

For now it will be my secondary option behind Gtalk.

The MSN client is very nice though. But it just seems like MSN is the final product while AIM is in a beta mode or soemthing. And remember jibi did say MSN would be released first so who know maybe an update will fix these issues.