Convincing other people to switch to jabber instead of their current IM is nearly impossible

It's hard, I grant you that :)

I dropped most of my ICQ contacts, I log in every now and then (once a month?). Maybe you could try staying offline in ICQ for a certain day every week?

I have a couple of contacts left on MSN, who are stopping me from using full-time Jabber. Currently I use a transport to talk with them, which works out ok.

If I don't get them switched to Jabber in a reasonable amount of time from now, I'll come back and change my vote ;)

Talk them into using GTalk - It's jabber. Then you can talk to them no matter what Jabber host you use (GTalk supports it!)

"[...] is nearly impossible": no! It is just not yet as desirable... let some time to the standards folks, let some time to developpers, let some time to evangelists... and let some time for the people to understand!

I want to see pidgin-vv get the -vv working for jabber... and better "IM Image"
support

I've found that most of the people I talk to on AIM are "computer illiterate" to the point that they seem to actually take pride in not being able to learn how to use a new IM program without someone holding their hand all the way through it. People like that who refuse to invest the small amount of effort needed to learn how to do something really bug me.

It's because Jabber is as cool as a pencil case (except Adium). that means Vista users are stuffed, and stuck with WLM.

it is though possible to let them use jabber in addition to their other IM ;)

and then make them switch slowly

I've convinced lots (in the dozens) of people start using jabber. Haven't really tried to argue them into dropping their old IMs, though. If they want to use talk, irc or whatever in parallell with Jabber, that's fine with me. If they want to talk to me they know where to find me.