I used vent during my *cough* *cough* WoW days and it worked well for me. Could just join Verizon and hope your friends are friends with other people in FF ;P.
XBL is limited to only people on your FL and you don't have 100 friends. Really I don't like talking unless I really have to. I really don't see how people can complain about Windower since they have the same status bars and timers.
If people are going to complain about something like that then why not start with the Van'Diel(sp) clocks. Doesn't that give some an advantage over nothing like Windower?
I play both PC and Xbox versions and don't see any advantage besides graphics.