Tor is the best choice you have right now. Using Tor Browser Bundle and
Torbidy (a Thunderbird extension) you can use both browsing and email in
freedom AND privacy. However, IM is a problem for a long time. You can try to
use TAILS, which has pidgin incorporated, but there is a danger of:
a) leaks;
b) not working anyway;
Pidgin apparently was very hard to get to work with Tor because is not a
matter of simply sending the text and receiving it back. It has to access the
servers of your IM account, use authentication, support OTR (for safety
reasons), etc. Roger Dingledine said that they are working into incorporating
IM into TBB but it will take some time. For now, there is no perfect
solution.
Maybe you can get the person you want to talk to to use a web based chat
room...? That way TBB would solve it. Is not a perfect solution anyway.
