# anybody here experienced with iChat?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-here-experienced-with-ichat/354776>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 29, 2006, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-here-experienced-with-ichat/354776 "2006-04-29T21:20:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-here-experienced-with-ichat/354776/1 "2006-04-29T21:20:36Z")

</div>

I don’t normaly like to ask general computer questions like this here, but I am at a complete loss. I quit AOL some time ago because they were charging me an exhorbitant amount of money for nothing (OK obviosly one feature.) but the one thing I miss is AOL instant messanger so I can talk to my freinds online.  
One neat feature on the mac OS X is iChat. Sometime ago I entered a screan name (I guess under the AIM thing thinking I could use it as AIM.) “monobrow123” but I was never able to get it to work. AIM is really not that important in my life so I just ignoreed it and went about my buisiness.  
Now, I was trying to have a conversation with a freind of mine over the phone, but he gets unbeleivably poor reception. As a result we thought it would be easiest to converse via e-mail. This sucks!  
At this point I figured I should try to get iChat to work and see if we could hook up that way. the problem is I don’t remember my iChat password so I can’t log into my old account. Worse yet, I can’t figure out how to create a new account (this seems like it would be a really poor buisiness strategy.).

```
What can I do? Oh yeah, naturally he has a PC.
```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-here-experienced-with-ichat/354776/2 "2006-04-29T21:30:06Z")

</div>

[Create an AIM screen name](https://reg.my.screenname.aol.com/_cqr/registration/initRegistration.psp?mcState=initialized&seamless=n&createSn=1&sitedomain=www.aim.com&siteState=http%3A//www.aim.com/get_aim/congratsd2.adp&triedAimAuth=y&promo=380464&mcAuth=%2FBcAG0RT2sUAAK8zADZeUERT2wEI8iSAevY0p%2B8AAA%3D%3D).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-here-experienced-with-ichat/354776/3 "2006-04-29T21:33:05Z")

</div>

Can you use [AIM for Mac](http://www.aim.com/get_aim/mac/latest_macosx.adp?aolp=) or, better yet, [Skype](http://www.skype.com/download/)?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![spingears](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@spingears](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spingears)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-here-experienced-with-ichat/354776/4 "2006-04-29T21:42:25Z")

</div>

You can download and install Yahoo IM at no charge.