Popcorn, have you noticed the newer version of msn, version 6,has a place you can put your pictures and you can change your backgrounds to for example pictures of your beautiful cockateils, the pictures you show, the ones that your contacts can see, you can also change them and put your choice of pictures there also.
You can make your own emoticons too.
Like you I had Aim too, fact is I had all three on my computer, Aim, Yahoo messenger, and MSM messenger, but I got rid of Aim and kept the other two.