...I DLed this ICQ thing...&, uh..it's very, very annoying. And complex. And cluttered. Have people not heard of the idea of things beings simple? Can't kill the annoying fucking sounds or keep the stupid fucking listbox thing out of the goddamned way without sifting thorugh 8 zillion things....how do you people USE this shit? Piss-poor design. Caesar si vivaret, ad remum dareris & all that.
Bah. Back to watch Adlai stick it to Zorin in the UN.
[ May 30, 2002, 12:57: Message edited by: Shik ]
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
ICQ, at one time, was less a textbook example of bloatware than it is now. I suspect most of its current users have weathered the changes, and are able to find their way through the nonsense through experience. But that hardly makes the program user-friendly.
There are other programs that can use ICQ's network, though, as well as others, like AIM or MSN's. Miranda seems to be popular, plus it has a cool name. This isn't a personal recommendation, however.
Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :
Trillian (www.trillian.cc) runs on all the IM networks: Yahoo, ICQ, MSN, AIM.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Granted, ICQ's interface is... somewhat illogically layed out. It does have the advantage of being far more customisable than any other messenging program, *if* you manage to configure it properly.
Simply put, ICQ has been bogged down by tons of useless extra features (which make it all but unintelligible to anyone who hasn't used it since day one): early versions were 1) much easier to use, 2) didn't eat up 30 odd megabytes of diskspace, 3) handled system resources far more efficiently, 4) had no built-in banners or other commercial junkware, and 5) weren't riddled with popup windows.
My advice is to get a hold of an older edition (I use 99b), or avoid ICQ altogether. MSN (*shudder*) or AIM (*skin crawles with revulsion*) are probably better alternatives, though I wouldn't recommend them.
Oh yeah, if you really want a no-nonsense tool, download and familiarise yourself with mIRC. It's worth the effort.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
I'm on AOL, but I figured having an alternative to AIMism woould be handy.
Posted by Charles Capps (Member # 9) on :
You might also want to look at the AOLIM included with Netscape 7 PR1 - it can talk to both ICQ and AIM networks...
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
ICQ is far better if you go to the options and untick almost every box. I also prefer it in the Message Mode where is disappears after every post. I prefer to use it as very fast e-mail, where I can do other stuff. MSM is more like IRC, where you have to devote 100% of your attention to it.
ICQ2002 does have one incredibley useful feature though. It keeps your contact list details on their servers, so if you swap machines you can keep all your contact details.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Right. I think I've effectively bitchified the software enough to be its pimpmaster. So...yeah. 161376414. Bring it AWN.