The IM cap is so stupid! It makes it almost impossible to get IMs from friends when your offline. The way it should work IMO is that it shows the last 25 notices you received from groups, and IMs from people and objects should have no cap. The reason why IM caps are so stupid is notices from groups use up all your 25 messages, so IMs from people can't get in. group notices are not as important as IMs from people. Linden Labs please fix this!
PS please don't try to tell me about the IM to Email patch, I already know about it. Please fix your IM system. No other system puts a cap on IMs.