Q: What apps can I use as an instant messenger app apart from ichat?

Can you confirm you have an eMac, and what variant it is?

If you need help finding this variant, please use this Apple article to find it by serial number:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2395

That can help us determine if your eMac's OS can by upgraded if needed

Your eMac according to the identication from the Apple site info,

may be considered an eMac 2005, similar to the eMac USB2.0.

More info for both -- via links to everymac.com online:

•eMac G4/1.25 (USB 2.0) PowerMac6,4

  1

•eMac G4/1.42 (2005) PowerMac6,4

Should yours be the last model with 1.42GHz PPC G4 CPU...

...according to http://mactracker.ca database for 2005 eMac.

{Both USB2.0 & 2005 versions eMac can run Leopard 10.5.8 + 2GB RAM.}

Hopefully this helps determine if the computer & software

be purposed to such a use which you outlined in your post.

Good luck & happy computing!

Thanks for confirming, Andrew. Most of the posts here lately have been everything but eMacs so we had the check! The 1.42ghz eMacs were the best and most trouble-free of the lot

Did your eMac not come with iChat? It is bundled with OSX and should have been factory installed. As most companies stopped writing software for PowePC Macs (like the eMac) long ago, finding another chat app compatible with an eMac could be very difficult today.

The iChat has become Messages, in newer OS X this acts a bit different than former iChat. There had been a transition some time ago, and even the dot Mac situation is also different. Seems to me it no longer worked a year or so ago; accounts in .mac had some grace period, the details are fuzzy because I never had an AIM, .mac, or iChat, etc account.

The connection of .mac to the mobileme days made some mac.com names for iChat, or so I heard. Lapsed account names using residual mobileme or .mac account names from the time were still allowed. Some related details, not an answer to your question, appear in an ASC discussion from last year:

•iChat stopped working... (May 2013)

https://discussions.apple.com/message/22139588#22139588

For a variety of iChat and .mac results, links, see:

https://www.google.com/search?q=.mac+support+iChat

There is an older support article in those results that may be worth a look.

However the iChat application may been the best thing to have used, once you sort the details; and when set up on the other end, hopefully it would just work and you won't be called upon often to figure out where they went wrong using it.

Not sure what web-based alternative would provide instant message capability in Leopard 10.5.8; however for a time, Google accounts let their members use some message service online. There had been changes there as some things were discontinued without notice; other items were google+ only.

The need for an external iSight (FW400) camera with the eMac for video support to Chat is another detail. I have an external iSight in a box, never used though it should function. Once set up, it would be adequate in the last model eMac, if you happened across one.

An old version AIM for download, perhaps possible to help setup? some antique iChat, was noted at oldapps. Be wary of other items that may follow on some software download sites, such as genieo, & adware... http://www.oldapps.com/mac/aim.php?system=mac_os_x_10.5_leopard_powerpc

Sounds like a project to me.

Good luck