Mercury Messenger (http://www.mercury.im) is my favourite MSN client.  It's very configurable, and since it's written in Java, runs on every platform.  Yesterday it started disconnecting from MSN every minute.  As suspected, Microsoft changed their server.  To fix the problem, you can apply the necessary patch to Mercury Messenger from here: http://wiki.mercury.im/index.php/ChallengeBug
Here's a question.  Since Microsoft knows more clients than the official Windows Messenger connect to MSN, does it have a responsibility to inform those preferred clients of upcoming server changes?

I would like to say yes.

However, if M$ is not getting any money from these other providers, which use it's system, then likely M$ feels it owes nothing to them... and it's up to those providers to make sure they keep up to date with M$.

It's much like Cuba how they used to link their peso with the american dollar... They had no say in how the federal reserve bank did business... and the americans obviously felt no duty to inform Cuba about their plans.... now since then Cuba has linked the peso with the Euro.