Biggest, but is it best? (mirabilis.com)

Member Name: Stalin

Product:	mirabilis.com
Date:	06/07/01 (29 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Biggest user-base, Feature packed, The publicly accepted king of IM

Disadvantages: Amateurish all round, Bad user-interface, Easily hacked and cracked

Instant messaging has been around for a while. For those who don't know, instant messaging allows users to chat with one another in real time, whenever they were online. Of course, many people had been doing the same thing long before this in IRC. Instant messaging, however, brought the idea to the masses, and it was ICQ that was the first one to do this.

Since it's conception, instant messaging has grown considerably, offering more and more functions. Again, ICQ is at the forefront in this respect. Group chat (IRC style), SMS messaging, file transfer, paging, built-in e-mail client and e-mail checking facilities, voice chat and support for many 3rd party peer-to-peer apps are all here. It is easy to understand why many are hailing instant messaging as an end to e-mail. But ICQ's features go beyond the client. Web applets can show whether people are on or off-line in real time and you can page any ICQ user from any computer using ICQ's web page.

So, ICQ offers a very complete list of features, but do they work? Yes indeed! Almost flawlessly, in fact (although I sometimes find that file transfer is a bit iffy). It really is a complete communications centre.

However, it is not all good news. Feature packed it may be, but aesthetically pleasing it most certainly isn't. Visiting their web page gives you an idea of what to expect - a very amateurish affair, very crowded and hard to find what you need. The app is similar - buttons everywhere, menus with 20 items or more in them and a general feel that no real thought has been put into making a particularly easy to navigate interface. At first it is nigh on impossible to find what you need, but after using it for a decent length of time, you are able to use it well enough, but it still hurts your eyes to look at it.

Recently, the creators of ICQ have decided to put banner ads all over the software in order to make a bit of money. This prompted a huge rebellion in the
ICQ community, and within days people were posting ways to hack the client to remove the ads. You can now find nice little executables that do it all for you. It just goes to show how badly designed the software is.

There are also security risks; more than in any other IM app. using a firewall is essential, otherwise prepare to be hacked. Spam is kept fairly minimal I find, but a far greater annoyance is having random people asking to chat all the time. They can be blocked, but it is still annoying.

That brings me on to the user-base. ICQ has the largest user-base of all IM clients. This alone means that ICQ should really be your first choice. But it depends what you are looking for. If you just want to chat with your friends, your can take your pick, but if you meet people online, particularly in the gaming community, chances are they will use ICQ. The fact is that it is the most powerful IM client out there, and you cannot ignore it.

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