An ICQ beater? (Microsoft MSN Messenger Service)

Member Name: rob_writer

Product:	Microsoft MSN Messenger Service
Date:	18/10/00 (28 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Simple

Disadvantages: Simple

After a long time using ICQ I finally gave in to peer pressure and decided to try MSN Messanger. While I adamantly held the belief that ICQ was better in every way, after using MSN for a while Im not so sure.

ICQ definetly has more features than MSN Messanger, but this isn't necessarily a good thing. The problem with ICQ is that it has too much, and rather than being compact and fast like MSN it is very resource intensive and unless you have a powerful PC your sure to note a drop in your systems performance when you run it. MSN has the same basic facility, it allows you to chat with your friends and people you met on the net. While ICQ only displays the last message, MSN has a more chat room style appearance with the whole chat being displayed in the main window. MSN's other main features are talk, where you can talk with a microphone, and file transfer, quite obviously allowing you to transfer files.

MSN requires you to have a Hotmail account, and integrates your hotmail account in to the program informing you when you have a new email, which is quite useful if you use Hotmail, but in reality everyone is better off with a POP3 account.

There are two main areas where I feel MSN is lacking, first is the ability to send off-line messages and second is the lack of an easy way to add new people to your contact list. People may say that you can just send emails but I have found that on ICQ the ability to send off line messages was greatly used, whereas someone may check their email once a day they are likely to run ICQ every time they connect to the net so you know they will definetly get the message.
The lack of an ability to add new contacts is more of a problem, you have two options, either by knowing someones hotmail address or by searching the MSN Nework for people with a certain name or address, but I cant help feeling that this defies the point of chatting on the net, surelu we all want to meet new people, something MSN ma
kes difficult.

If both of these problems can be sorted then MSN will definetly be my choice over ICQ, chat should be compact and quick, and on my current PC ICQ slows the system too much. For once it isn't Microsoft who make the bloatware!!

One thing I would say to anyone still to choose an instant messaging service, choose one and stick with it. After using ICQ then converting to MSN I have contacts on both, which means I must run both at the same time, often to my confusion.

Overall, I think that most people would be better off with MSN Messanger, with the ease of use it provides and the familiar Microsoft brand name.

Summary: