I am sorry if I appeared to be rude, I do not feel especially entitled to any answers to any question in any general time frame.
When I was talking about using MSN and AOL IM, what I meant to ask about was LinuxMCE's ability to work with other clients on those networks, either via some kind of plug-in, or just allow the application to run externally.
I think I will try the DVD-based installation. Thanks.