ICQ - THE way to keep in touch with people (mirabilis.com)

Member Name: EazyDude

Product:	mirabilis.com
Date:	17/07/01 (34 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Widely used, SMS capable, Better than MSN Messenger

Disadvantages: Memory intensive, Contacts stored on PC (backing up a pain), Apparently hackable, no probs for me though

Ever since I signed onto ICQ a couple of years back, I thought what's the point? I'm never online at the same time as my friends are, plus I can always call them. Time moved on and so did my friends, around the country as they left for university and jobs etc... Now with the advent of free connections and not having to pay for the phone calls anymore to the net, it seems that we keep in touch more now than when we did before the free calls came along. ICQ enables you to send short messges, chat to people (more than one) real time, send text messages, email, and more.

ICQ has to be better than MSN Messenger, which I've also tried. It gives you the ability to send messages offline, whilst MSN Messenger forces messges sent offline to be sent as an email. Additionally, recently may I add, MSN Messenger has failed to sign on, whereas I have NEVER had a problem signing onto ICQ. My brother has ICQ at university in his room and can work it through a proxy server, and even a firewall, whereas I don't think you can with MSN messenger. I love the function of being able to text people as well, with replies coming straight to your desktop for free. ICQ has the advantage over MSN Messenger of being able to text people who are and aren't signed up to ICQ. Ideal if your friends are on the move, and you're stuck in the office/at home. Work internationally as well. I have managed to organise booking accommodation for myself in Sri Lanka through a friend, with the use of SMSs. I'm also in touch with a friend who moved away to Mauritius, who has a mobile I text too. I also have ICQ set to monitor my email account for email then to load up my Outlook when there is mail to collect, which MSN Messenger can't do.

Drawbacks of ICQ are that it has slowly become more memory intensive with all it's updates. It has sometimes crashed on me as well, but then with MS Windows as my operating system, who's hasn't? ICQ seems to have block
ed sending SMSs to Vodafone phones recently as well, which has proved to be a pain. Lets hope it comes back. There are now also advertisements with each window you bring up, which I have now become immune to. Apart from that, it is a little bit cluttered icon-wise, but usable after you get used to it.

Oh and one last thing. You know don't have to download ICQ to use it. Try http://www.icq.com/icqwebbie. It's a JAVA based version which means it runs from a webpage. Perfect for when I'm in college or at a friend's house.

Summary: