Google Talk: what to replace?

Question

Google Talk

I have a day of mourning. If you have also used Google Talk as your main IM, you will understand my mood. Attempts to log into gtalk after February 23 are blocked. After years of fighting, Google finally killed Talk for the greater glory of Hangouts.
With its lightweight, reliable and unpretentious client, simple and unobtrusive interface, support for text and audio chat, integration with contacts and gmail, Talk was almost the perfect tool.
Actually the question is - what did you switch to from GTalk, if, of course, you used it until now, and what are your feelings? Interested in experience when working under Windows 8 and 7, especially if there was a need to configure and explain to less experienced users (acquaintances, parents).
I'm still trying the chrome extension for hangouts and its application. More precisely, I switched to Skype as the main voip / IM and I'm trying to set up hangouts. Under Windows, it is unfortunately quite clumsy and problematic. From the latest - the extension refused to turn on in the morning with the error "I can not find the DNS server" until the person logged in to gmail.