I'll admit it, I don't really like AOL. I've used the AOL internet experience, and I wasn't impressed. Give me a normal ISP anyday, and I'll be happy.

When my family bought a computer 5 years ago, the internet wasn't very big in my area at the time. The few friends of mine that also had computers would find time to get online with me and chat the night away. Those were the days.

I used to be an avid ICQ user. I would SWEAR by ICQ, do little more than laugh at AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). My, how the times change. ICQ came out with newer and newer versions, all more bloated with worthless crap than the last. I was getting sick of the insane load times involved for ICQ, when I was so used to the good days of ICQ 98 that popped right up on my 486/DX4.

After a while, I decided to give up and and try AOL out. To be honest, I didn't like it at first. I was so used to nice perks like offline messages and such from ICQ, I couldn't stand using AIM.

As time went on, I began to like AIM more and more. Today, I don't know what I'd do without it.

Quite possibly the best 'feature' that AIM has, is it's simplicity. Less is definately more in this case. The load time are non-existant compared to rival ICQ versions. Sure, ICQ has SO many more features, but from my experience, 90% of them are just plain useless. They may sound like a neat idea, but the majority of internet chatters won't ever use them.

In the newest versions of AIM, your buddy list is stored online so that no matter what computer you connect to AIM from, your buddy list will be like your computer at home. It may not sound that great, but it is infinately useful.

Also, I really like the chat window idea. I can't tell you many times I had to go digging through my ICQ history to figure out what the person just said. Such a pain. The newer versions of ICQ fix this by cloning the chat window of aol, except much uglier.

All in all, AIM is a very simple, yet powerful and fun program you can use to communicate with your internet buddies. No chat program I have used has been as easy, or as quick. It's a great choice, give it a try.



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