Dear All

Received my new iMac 24" 2.8GHz Extreme in the post from Apple Online last week and I've been loving it! Managed to finally get Parallels working and transferred all my data from my PC laptop and that seems to be running well. However, I'm having serious problems with iChat right now.

I bought a .Mac account and have registered a User Name as directed etc. I have also installed the most recent firmware update for the iMac which was out last Thursday (13/9). However, when I add a buddy to my list, the iChat system accepts the buddy but then at the bottom of the buddy list where you have the 3 small icons (chat / call / video), these permanently stayed "greyed-out" no matter what I do...so I can't call, chat or video phone!! Quite frustrating. My Dad has tried calling me and the system shows that he is doing so, yet I try to accept the call and it returns a "PaulN (me) rejects your call" error message. He was able to send a chat message through and we talked like this for a while, but when I tried to initiate the chat, no success.

My Dad ran through a few basic diagnostic tests with me to no avail and suggested I call Apple Support. I called Apple on Tuesday and spent 1h40 mins on the phone to them (sadly on my mobile ) and went from their initial technical consultant right up to a Senior Consultant and went through a whole host of (crazy-looking) diagnostic tests, but still to no avail. The last person I spoke with said he'd call me back on Friday after speaking with his superior about the issue, but I haven't heard back from them yet.

I realise that if Apple can't sort this issue then I'm probably silly to even try asking the forum for help in this respect, however, I was wondering if anyone else has had this issue. Could there be something really simple missing here?

We've tried uninstalling and reinstalling iChat, firewall on/off, different User Accounts etc.

Any help / support much appreciated!

Regards

Paul

P.S Any tips on successful networking of my old laptop and the new iMac - think I have the internet connection sussed (most of the time) but not file / printer sharing for some reason. Even if you have a link to directions on how to do this.