You are quite right in that the Paging and Chat features have been very under-utilized. I would like to see them used much more extensively - to enhance this community and to see how the load affects my server.
I believe that for real time chat and the paging features to work, you must be using a javascript capable browser. this should not be an issue as IE and NS have been compliant since their respective version 3 releases.
May I suggest that you post a message to a specific forum inviting a chat based discussion on some topic at a given time so users can plan ahead to attend. You could also test further the paging feature at that time. I know these features work.
Let me know how I can be of further help!
System Administrator
cmmworld.com