BunkBlog

Friday –

My older sister has discovered Instant Messenging finally. Of course, her
daughter has been using it for the past year and more, but you know old people
and technology.

This newfound interest in messenging (Or "using MSN Messenger" in
her case) caused me to evaluate the various IM clients. So, here’s a quick-and-dirty
review of the Big Four: AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, and MSN Messenger (or whatever Microsoft
is calling it this week).

When I started the test, I had 65% Resources free total. I’ll let you know
what the usage of each is and how much they let go when they’re done.

AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) v4.3
(62% resources after loading) –
0.9 seconds to load window, 1.2 seconds to populate window

• Features
• Seamless integration with the millions of morons…users on AOL
• Custom Icons per user, including yourself
• Remembers multiple user names and passwords
• Block users
• Save conversations as HTML
• Online alerts – global or individual (not custom per user though)
• Groups of “buddies”
• File transfers
• Limitations
  • No cam
  • Signs you up for Netscape email for some reason
  • Either on or offline or away, global settings only.
  • Closing window just signs off
• (65% free after closing)

Yahoo v5.0
(62% resources after loading) – 7.6 seconds to load window, 7.65 seconds to populate
window

• Features
  • Buddy groups
  • Offline messages
  • Webcam builtin (3% resource hit)
  • Invisible mode (global)
  • Block users
  • Option to auto-archive conversations, or manually save
  • Customizable “Away codes”
  • Links to Yahoo content (News, stocks, etc.)
  • Add personal info to profiles of buddies
  • Ignore filters
  • IMvironments
• Limitations
  • Signs up for Yahoo mail, which you can ignore
  • No individual “visibility” filter
  • The “Close” button minimizes the app only
  • Multiple users have to type in their passwords when changing over
• (65% free after closing)

ICQ 2000b
(59% resources after loading) – 6.5 seconds to load window, 11.1 seconds to populate
window

• Features
  • Dockable window
  • Personalized visibility filters
  • offline messages
  • Block users
  • Remembers multiple user names and passwords
  • Auto-archives all conversations
  • Multi-user Chat
  • Webserver
  • Hooks into other programs
  • Checks any POP3 mailboxes (multiple servers & deletion from a preview)
  • Buddy Groups (toggleable)
  • SMS, PC-PC phonecalls, file transfers
  • Customizable sounds
  • Closing window closes program
• Limitations
  • Nearly useless “find member” features
  • No built-in webcam
  • Can’t close from the tray, have to open the window
• (65% free after closing)

MSN Messenger 3.1(formerly Microsoft Messenger, soon Windows
Messenger or some darned thing)
(63%) – 4.9 seconds to load window, 4.9 seconds to populate window

• Features
  • File transfers
  • Offline messages go to email
  • Link to Netmeeting
  • Block users
  • Manually save conversations as text files
  • Customizable sounds (in Control Panel)
  • Closing window closes program
• Limitations
  • Attempts to sign you up to Hotmail
  • No built-in webcam
  • Global settings, not per-buddy
  • Users have to type usernames and passwords when changing logins
• (63% free after closing)

Let’s see what we can conclude from all this data…

The global vs. per-user functions are a pet peeve of mine, mainly because I
first started using chat clients when ICQ was the only alternative to IRC-Chat
(you newbies might call it mIRC, after the main client used to access it). Here’s
the deal with the difference: in ICQ, I can decide to be invisible, with the
caveat that some selected people can always see me. None of the other major
clients has that option, without removing people from the buddylist entirely.

The MSN client merges with the operating system in the sounds portion of the
Control Panel and when you access Hotmail via MSIE. There are good and bad things
about that, mostly bad.

The biggest things in my mind are speed and features. ICQ has the features
down, but AOL Instant Messenger is the one with the speed, both of loading and
finding your "buddies" online. MSN is next in speed, and right at
the bottom in features. Considering Microsoft’s well-known problems with privacy
and security, you may want to be careful using that one.

MSN has several unique attributes: it is the only one of the four which did not release its requested resources when exited; it is the only one which insists on keeping a task button on the toolbar, as well as the much less-obtrusive notification tray; it is the only one without groups.

Overall, each of the clients has something unique about it. Unfortunately,
since there is no standard for messenging, if you have lots of online friends
you’ll need two or more of these things to keep in touch with them all.

1. BunkBlog » Updates says:

   2006.08.24 at 8:29 pm

   […] Added a long-planned new thought on my site. If you need to explain to someone why ICQ is better than MSN (or Yahoo is better than MSN, or AIM is better than MSN), I’ve listed all the good and bad of each client. […]