Instant Messaging: Should I ICQ (I Seek You) or Not
	: Dear Dr. Web, "To ICQ or not to ICQ,that is the question.."I have resisted the "movement' towards ICQ thus far (I'm talking home PC of course) due to some uneducated opinions I have formed about it. I have heard that it's "buggy" and something of a "resource hog". I'm also not a big fan of any software that relinquishes control of my PC to "persons unknown". On the other hand, I'm starting to feel the mounting weight of peer pressure as I have more and more of my "tekkie" friends saying, "What! You're not on ICQ"?! What can you tell me about it? (Bear in mind that I am not a "chatter" AT ALL but I do occasionally use email now for "semi-instant" messaging with varying degrees of success). PH 03/30/2001
	: Dear PH, 'Tis a difficult life we lead, and the question of ICQ is topmost of mind. But for those who do not know what ICQ is let us briefly digress. ICQ is a more playful (youthful/not business oriented) version of AOL's Instant Messenger, which we use in the BigCompany. Instant Messaging allows you to log onto the Internet and send text messages, graphics, and even talk to others on their computer. Here are some useful examples of Instant Messaging: Your manager is online in the Bahamas and you wanted to send a quaint little message, like "Don't eat yellow snow". You could call him/her and have a discussion about what constitutes the colour yellow, but that would interrupt his/her work. The message is not important enough to make a phone call, but you want to send the message anyway. Besides, you don't really want to talk to him/her THAT badly. Ok, not at all. You work at home with your trusty laptop and only have one phone line. While you use the phone line to connect with your computer you cannot use your phone to talk. So how can you work? You may not want to talk to anyone, which would work out just fine. But people may want to talk to you. If these people are online and use Instant Messaging, they could send messages to you while you work, like "Isn't that boss in Bahamas a weenie?" and carry on working. If you need to talk to them using a phone, you could use Instant Messaging to speak PC to PC with a microphone. You could, therefore, whistle while you work. Someone in the area just let a big fart go, and you're holding your nose. It's so bad your eyes are watering. You suspect the guy in the next pod, whose hygiene habits are somewhat lacking. In general he stinks. I mean someone should donate a bar of soap to this guy. But back to the noxious gas in the air. You want to check with your buddies around you but if you get up and walk you'll run into something because you don't want to open your eyes, which are still watering. Using your well learnt touch typing skills you Instant Message your buddies, who assure you they were not the ones with the excess gas. So now you know what Instant Messaging is and what it can do. There are 4 brands of Instant Messaging out there: AOL Instant Messaging, ICQ, Yahoo Instant Messaging and Microsoft Instant Messaging. All are free on the Internet. The BigCompany has standardized on AOL Instant Messaging. AOL Instant Messaging is utilitarian, simple, clean and very business. Some would say boring. ICQ is musical, youthful, flashy and fun. You start up the program and a loud ship's foghorn greets you. People you know come on, and you hear cutsy sounds. ICQ is where all the young and hip people hang out. You get the picture. There are way more functions in ICQ and therefore learning the thing takes a bit of time. Most options you will never use, and therefore clutter up and makes your life overly complex. But there are a lot of people on ICQ. Lots, both good and bad. Like your friends who are bugging you to get with the program and stop being a stick in the mud. Anonymous people will spontaneously send you links to porn sites. Your younger cousins, nephews, and nieces will look up to you and state the obvious, like "I didn't know you could do computers?" when you tell them your ICQ number. You will have renewed respect, so don't geek out and blow it. There are some major drawbacks though, particularly with the current version, 2000b. It sucks your computer resources and CPU power harder than your HEPA vacuum cleaner. It's buggier than the Florida flying cockroach. It crashes more often than the stock market and it may make your PC unstable. I've not experienced the crashing part, but I've experienced everything else. if you want more horror stories you can go to www.pcmag.com and read the user reviews, which are quite scathing. People today have no mercy on crap software today. To make your decision easier I'll give you some guidelines depending on where you will use ICQ: I want to use ICQ in the BigCompany, even though it's not the preferred Instant Messaging product. I understand that no one will provide technical support. I also understand that in order to prevent my boss from hearing strange ship foghorns I will have to turn my PC's speaker volume down. Use ICQ 200b, which will work through the BigCompany's firewall. This is the buggy version, but you'll have to live with it. I only use it at home, have a firewall, or want the latest and greatest version. Use ICQ 2000b I only use it at home, don't have a firewall, and don't want lots of options I will never use. Use ICQ 1999c, which is no longer available from ICQ. No matter. Search on http://www.google.com and you'll find the old version. It works very well and is quite small and stable. To make you feel better about this product, here are some options you can set up: In order to talk with you, you could ask them to request permission. Once you grant permission they can then talk. This discourages the riffraff from talking to you You can block someone completely. I block all those who submit porn links to me. You don't have to use your own name. You could try something like "Yellow Snow" instead. This protects your identity, but also makes it difficult for others to remember who you are. You could tell others you aren't there, but you really are. And then wait until someone you want to talk to comes on. Then you could magically pop up. If you've not gone on ICQ at all, it's worth doing it just so you know what you've been missing. Like all those people so helpfully giving you links to porn sites. Dr. Web