Vista - Vista and Office Communicator 2005 (Alternatives)

We are currently in the process of getting some users in the company
to test vista. I installed Office Communicator 2005 on a vista
machine, it connects to our server, populates the friends list, but
displays all users as "Status Unknown". The users can see me online
and I can send them messages. Our setup:

Server:
Live Comm 2005 SP1

Client:
Office Communicator 2005 (all hotixes from MS have been applied,
Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 Hotfix KB 934571) there was an
issue in VPN where my occurance happend and I did make sure that
registry key (per the update) was in the registry just in case.

Usernames are companyid@ourcompany.com
Connect to server via TCP at 192.168.1.3

Any reason this is happening?

Are there any alternative clients out there that can be used, I do not
want to delay this because of Microsofts inability to have something
decent for corporations to use. I do not feel we need to use OC 2007
Beta.

Thanks