The first IM network that I happen to use was ICQ. Most of my friends were on ICQ, and the system was really good. The only bad thing about the system was that one had to remember an ID number. Then people began using MSN messenger. Mostly it was because it was already installed on the systems that most people were using. In the labs and such, one could generally not install ICQ because they had normal user accounts that could not install software. But MSN messenger was already installed and it was easy to start up a chat.
But I miss a feature from ICQ. That feature was offline messaging. As far as I remember one could leave messages for a person even if he was online. When he came online again, even if the first party was off line the server would deliver the messages he sent earlier, like email. I really miss that feature with MSN messenger. Oh well, you win some and you lose some. I cant wait to get of MSN though. I dont like it.
On another note, I tried out a console based client for MSN today called gtmess. I had been really running away from trying out one of these clients because the learning curve is higher. You have to read the documentation to learn what the various key combinations are and such, and I was'nt finding time for this. Though, I run across a lot of Linux systems and launching X takes time. I would rather just go online, chat, and then leave and it is much faster in console provided you have a client and you know how to use it. Today being Thanksgiving and all I gave gtmess a try, and it is quite a good client. Definitely going to install it on most systems.
