It’s been more than 6 months since I first used AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). And I have to tell you that I’m an AIM addict!!! I go on AIM each day for at least for 6 hours and chat with my friends. And I don’t just sit there and do something else during that 6-hour period. I chat during that whole time! Well for those of you who doesn’t use the Internet often might think that’s a very long time. And you might be asking: “What kind of a crazy psychological computer/internet freak would spend 6 hours everyday just chatting?!” Well you’ll find out if you continue to read this opinion. And I bet that you’ll do exactly the same thing once you try it out!

Let’s talk about what AIM offers. Well it’s a communication/chat program so you can talk to your friends online. It also offers a very convenient little list called the buddy list. It basically stores all your buddies’ SN (screen name). When your buddies are offline, then their SN would go under the offline folder. If they’re online you can send IM (instant messages) to them! You can also search for buddies with the find buddy wizard made by AIM. You basically choose a buddy either 1)by name 2)by e-mail address or 3)by common interest. If you like talking to strangers, then you should use the find buddy by common interest option.

Let me explain more about what you can do inside an IM window. The new version of AIM let’s you choose a buddy icon to send to your buddies when you send IM to your buddy. A lot of the buddy icons look pretty cute. Anyway that’s not really the point I’m trying to make. What’s really cool in the IM window is that you can make direct connections, which would let you send pictures as messages to your buddy, and you can see whether your buddy is responding to your IM’s (a little icon shows “typing” when your buddy is typing)! This makes your conversations very efficient since you can “see” whether your buddy is daydreaming or not. The new versions of AIM also allows for voice chat. You can talk to your buddy just like you were to talk to him on the phone!




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