ICQ - 2001b
Written: Feb 03 '02 (Updated Feb 27 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Wonderful instant message program
Cons: The ads on messages!
The Bottom Line: Great way to talk to your friends and meet new people.
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| kiko_cat's Full Review: ICQ |
I have been using ICQ since around 1995 so I have used a lot of different versions of this program (and until recently I wouldn't have been connected and not had it on). This program is great to be able to talk to new people and friends from school or work. However, there is one problem with it right now.
Ads
Ads are everywhere in the program now. I refused to use 2000a or 2000b because of all the ads but recently all my messages were not getting to people I was sending them to so I had to upgrade to 2001b (which came out this week). The problem is that at the bottom of every message you send or receive there is an ad and there is no way to remove this ad.
Instant Messages
Like AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger you are able to talk to your friends instantly. You can also meet new people by using different look-ups and putting yourself on Free To Chat will allow others with similar interests to find you and start a conversation. I have meet a lot of new people with this program.
Status
With ICQ there are many different messages you can have for your online status, which makes it simple for you to leave the program on but also not be disturbed unless you want to talk to that person, including:
Available/Connect
Free For Chat
Away
N/A (Extended Away)
Occupied (Urgent Messages)
DND (Do Not Disturb)
Privacy (Invisible)
Offline
I think at one time or another I have used all of these online statuses for one reason or another.
Alerts
This is a great feature. You can completely customize not only the alerts for all users but you can also set up individual sounds for different users so without looking you will know who is messenging you and what type of message they are sending you. It also allows you to turn off all sounds, which is what I have because I don't like the sounds interrupting CD's that I am listening to.
Other Features
There are so many features that naming them all in less than 8000 characters is a little hard but I'll try to do this:
File Sharing - You can send pictures or any other types of files to your friends. This can be a little slow at times and I have seen it be slower than transferring files on IRC (which I rarely use but this is the best comparison that I have). This makes it great to send files to friends.
Spell Checker - This is great for those of us who can't spell very well when we are typing. You do need to download this after you get ICQ but I feel that it is worth it if you have a hard time spelling in a chat room.
Access to your contact list from any computer - This is a new feature but so far I like this one. You are able to store your contact list on their servers and if you are at a different computer (or even if you have to reinstall ICQ for some reason) you are able to retrieve your contact list without having to re-add everyone and we all know from other versions of ICQ that this can be a pain if you have a huge contact list.
Send messages to ICQ, Cell Phone or e-mail - This is also a new feature which will allow you to send messages to your cell phone, e-mail or ICQ so your never out of touch with your friends. I have not tried this feature yet but it looks like something that is worth while to try in the future.
ICQ Chat - This should have it's own section in here since there are so many features for Chat with ICQ. This is so simple to because all you need to do is click on the users name and then select chat. In this you can give a reason why you want to chat also. Have a large group and you want to invite your friends to this chat also, well you can do that to. I have been in ICQ chats with over 50 people and it works great.
While in chat you can have every user in an individual window or you can have it in IRC style. This is entirely up to you.
Send E-mail - This is another way for you to send mail, if the person is offline and it's important for you to get a message through to them you can send them an e-mail from the ICQ Control Panel. You can also tell ICQ to alert you if you have new e-mail. Personally I have this feature turned off because I have my e-mail set up to check for mail every 2 minutes so for me it's not important to have this feature set-up.
Instant Messages (of course) - What would an instant message program be if you could not send messages. You can send messages to people who are offline and online (which I have heard is not available with AOL Instant Messenger - even though I use this I had never noticed that before). But I like being able to send messages even if people are offline so they can get them when they come online.
ICQ Phone - Yes, you can talk to your friends over ICQ and hear their voices. I know a lot of messenger programs have this feature now but ICQ added this a long time ago so they were probably the first to add this.
Greeting Cards - Just like Yahoo! Greetings you can send birthday cards or other greetings through ICQ. These can be delivered through e-mail or to their ICQ number which means that they will get this instantly.
Games - This is something that you have to set-up after you have installed ICQ but it allows you to play games with your friends on ICQ and invite friends to play with you.
Voice Messages - This is great and I have a couple friends who like to send voice messages for different occasions. They can be slow to send depending on your connection but they make chat a little more personal.
7 addresses for friends to use to get in touch with you - This is another feature that I really don't use because I don't need more ways for people to contact me. But once you get an ICQ account there are 7 different ways for people to contact you through ICQ.
If you want to read about more features you can go to http://www.icq.com/icqtour/advanced/ for more information.
Adding Friends
This is such an important feature and ICQ makes this very simple, you can search for your friends by e-mail address, nickname, first name or last name and ICQ number. If they don't come up you can also send them an invitation to get ICQ also.
In fact this is so simple to do because there is a button at the bottom of the ICQ program that says "Add/Invite Users". To add someone click here and you will get a new screen to search by.
White Pages
You can also search for friends using ICQ White Pages. This makes it simple to find users searching a lot of different criteria such as:
First Name
Last Name
Nickname
E-mail Address
Age
Gender
City/State
Country
Language
Company
Past Affiliations
Organizations
Keywords
To use this just start a search in wizard mode and click on White Pages at the bottom of the screen and you will get a huge menu with the options above. This makes it very simple to find new friends or find lost friends who you know have ICQ. I have used this feature many times and it works great.
Ignoring Users
Yes you will get spam messages through ICQ but stopping this is simple. When you open the message there will be a button at the bottom of the screen that will allow you to ignore the user. You can also ignore users that are on your contact list if you no longer want to talk to them. My advise here is to add them to your invisible list first and then add them to your ignore list so that they can not even see when your online.
Download and Installation
The download can take about 20 minutes depending on your connection but after it's downloaded you will be talking to friends and meeting new people within about 5 minutes. They make the installation very simple and if you ever need help there FAQ and help sections are very informative.
They also have more features that you can download to use with ICQ if you want to do that, although I have not done that yet because I feel everything that I need is already included with the program. For a list of these you can go to http://www.icq.com/icqtour/advanced/services.html
Conclusion
If you want to talk to friends instantly and be able to share files with them this is a great program for you to use. Very simple to use and clean interface. This is a terrific program for you to stay in touch with friends and is a lot simplier to use then some other Instant Messenger programs (plus it has a lot more users with the exception of maybe AOL because all AOL users have access to that). Also since ICQ has been around for so long they are also making improvements to it all the time.
I do not like that AOL now owns ICQ but I try to ignore that even though it is evident from all of the spam messages that you will get now while using it because this was not a major problem before AOL bought it.
There are so many more features that you can use with ICQ, that I have not been able to cover here (basically I highlighted the ones that I have used or looked into), so if you want more information about ICQ or want to download it you can take a look at www.icq.com
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
kiko_cat
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Location: Indiana
Reviews written: 207
Trusted by: 199 members
About Me:
Well life has been insane but trying to write more again.
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