I've been an avid user of ICQ since I found out about it in my college dorm freshman year. I found it's a great way to keep track of old high school friends across the country as well as college friends across the hall. (Literally at times.)

I've tried AIM, and besides being an AOL product, (ack) it was too intrusive and difficult to talk to more than one person at a time. So ICQ was a welcome improvement. You can talk to many people at the same time without having windows open constantly for each. There are also different settings for whether you are available, away for different lengths of time, or wish to be left alone completely.

ICQ is very customizable, from how complex you want your controls to be, to changing the sounds used for incoming messages and other features. It can be set on your desktop or in your tray at the bottom of the screen. There is also a formal real-time chat feature, file sharing capabilities, free greeting cards, birthday notification. And these are only a few!

Finding friends is extremely easy. Simply enter their name or nickname, use their ICQ number, email address, or interest. There are also convenient features to prevent unwanted people from messaging you. You can set your preferences so that anyone wishing to add you to their list must have your permission, you can set ICQ to ignore anything sent by a certain person, and you can delete and block people from your list or finding you.

There are few cons for ICQ. One would be the default sound made when an incoming message is received. The Uh-Oh can get annoying very quickly. Also there are periodic unsolicited messages from XXX sites asking you to visit. ICQ makes it easy to send messages to many different people at once. Luckily most other advertisers have not used ICQ in that manner. I believe it is against the rules in fact.

All in all, ICQ is a very convenient chat program for keeping in touch with people.




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