AOL instant messenger is not equal to ICQ chat
Written: Aug 14 '00 (Updated Jul 19 '01)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: chat system, free
Cons: no offline messaging, bad search engine
The Bottom Line: Why use AOL when there are better alternatives?
|
|
|
| three_ster's Full Review: AOL Instant Messenger |
For the past couple of months, I have been using AOL Instant Messenger, and I have a couple of things that I need to complain about. For instance, the ability to send a message to a person that is not currently online appears to be non-existent with this system. I often am using my computer at oddball times, and my friends aren't always online at the time that I need them to be. So, it is always easier for me to send them some kind of message even when they are off-line, so that they know I am trying to talk with them. With AOL, this is pretty much impossible.
How important is it to be able to send a message to someone that is not online? Let’s say that you and this other person are not going to be able to get a concurrent schedule going with your lives. While one person is home, the other is working, and vice versa. With AOL, if you go off-line (which happens everytime you turn your computer off), you will never find out if that person was there. ICQ does not care about when you are online, but rather it lets you send messages when nobody is online on the other end.
I am getting very familiar with the "this user is currently not online" message that appears when you attempt to send a message to someone who is not online at the time. With ICQ, you can send as many messages as you want to a person when they aren't around, and they will just receive them the next time that they log on to ICQ. This makes it a lot easier to contact people who aren't sitting by their computers all day like some of us. I know that I have begun to fall under the category of a compulsive computer user, but I must also confess that I like ICQ a lot better than AOL.
Another thing about AOL that drives me crazy is the "add a buddy" feature. With this feature you give the computer all kinds of information in order to get friends on to your "list". If you don't have all of the information necessary, you may never find the screen-name for a given friend. In ICQ, this is far easier to do. You merely have to type in an e-mail address, or a partial name, and it will do a search for you and come up with plenty of possible matches to the person that you are looking for. This is easier for me, because most of the time I can remember my friends' names, but I have a hard time with stuff like addresses that AOL needs. What I really dislike about the AOL search engine, is that you have to type everything in perfectly, with no spelling errors. In ICQ, you only have to type in the first few characters, and it is able to find an entire group of people who might be who you are looking for.
The only upside to AOL over ICQ, is the space on your computer. ICQ can eat up a lot of hard-drive space whereas AOL does not take up quite as much space. But, unfortunately this is the only benefit that AOL instant Messenger can ever offer to you.
Overall AOL is O.K. as a chat system by itself, but I can't help but compare it to ICQ which I have used for about 2 years now. So, I am forced to give AOL a very low rating because of this.
For those interested in either of them, AOL has Version 4.0 up and running at www.aol.com. But, I would suggest ICQ, which is located at any easy-to-download site: www.icq.com. For those of you who do not like either of them, www.hotmail.com, and www.yahoo.com, now also have their own chat programs that can easily be put on your computer.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.