My New Mac, Snow Leopard Edition, 2nd Edition

Setting Up an iChat Account

Before you can use iChat, you need to set up an iChat account, which you can do in one of three ways:

• Create or use an existing MobileMe email account

• Create or use an existing America Online Instant Messenger (AIM) account

• Create or use an existing Google Talk or Gmail account (which includes an instant messaging function)

An AIM (http://www.aim.com/) or Gmail (http://mail.google.com/) account is completely free to create, but you'll need to pay a $99 annual fee to create a MobileMe account. You only need to create an AIM, Gmail or Google Talk, or MobileMe account once. If you don't already have one of these accounts, or if you're unsure of which kind of account to create first, you should ask your friends what they use—as ...