live or memorex ?

[oldone]

hey topnotch i noticed we were both on at the same time a few minutes ago and it got me thinking, isn't there some way for us to talk back and forth real time? that would be pretty cool. of course for paying members only. what do you think- to hard to do- to much money- just not worth the trouble?

[Fierofool]

It might be good to not restrict it to paying members only.  It might help to get new people to join the club.  Chatting real time in the tech section, helping out a new person might be very beneficial to the club. 

There are a couple of instant message services that are free.  You can sign up for MSN or Gmail email accounts.  I often chat with family and friends through my Gmail.  I normally keep my image turned on, so that any of my friends can see if I'm online.  If I have the computer off or my image turned off, then they know I'm not available to chat. 

Lots of times when Allan Clarke (Proff on Pennocks) calls from Australia, he has trouble with signals and has to call back.  We often go to Gmail to try to solve a problem with his and Julie's Fieros.

There may be others that Pat knows of that might work better.  These are just suggestions.

[TopNotch]

I checked, and this forum program doesn't support it's own chat service. Maybe the next major version will -- It's currently in "release candidate" status, so it should be out in final form soon.
Meanwhile, if we can agree on a public chat service, we can all sign up for it and use that. I am signed up on Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger. I use mainly Yahoo. When I'm running Linux (as I am now), I have a chat client that supports just about all of the chat providers. BTW,  they're all free, but some are more intrusive with advertisements than others. (None of the ads show up in the Linux client. )