Phoenix Network Forums

Which instant messaging service do you prefer? Personally I use MSN and I like it better, mostly because I've been using that for a long time and it's the only thing that I used and I'm not really a person for change. ICQ I find has too many popus or something, AIM I don't like AOL which is a crappy reason. I used Yahoo for a bit, none of my friends used it so i quickly uninstalled it. Make a vote and put a reason why below! If you choose other, please specify.

MSN.

Its what I'm used to, its what my friends use and amazingly enough it actually looks pretty.

My vote goes for MSN, because it's used throughout the world~ and I guess it's the most popular one.

Although not technically an "IM" service, IRC is definitely superior to them all. With it's advanced capabilities and open protocols there is no need to use any other service.

Your poll is talking about "IM service" and then your are talking about having popups etc... ehh... thats client depended! I personally use Miranda as client with which I have the same interface for ICQ and MSN and I am absolutly positive ICQ is the better service (as IM) .

Oh, so many...

I guess I prefer IRC but again that's too geeky for universal use.

Everyone seems to use MSN these days so I cast my vote at that because I use it as a result of that.

ICQ seems dead to me these days, unfortunately, but it was my idea that it died of bloating. Sad.

De Kus wrote:Your poll is talking about "IM service" and then your are talking about having popups etc... ehh... thats client depended! I personally use Miranda as client with which I have the same interface for ICQ and MSN and I am absolutly positive ICQ is the better service (as IM) .

Oops I didn't mean popups. but on ICQ I used the service from their website, when I got it there were people opening chat windows iwth me that had hads. Maybe i could've set my status differently, but whatever... it got quite annoying.

MSN for the win. I only use MSN and AIM but I never bother to sign in on AIM.

I chose other because I use IRC as my primary mode of instant messaging people. Keep in mind though that you can use MSN, Yahoo and aim through sertain IRC servers on the net which I love because I don't have to install any extra programs on my windows box that will take up space in my system tray and my hdd and so on. Another reason this is good is because I use linux alot more than windows anyway, and it is nice to just leave irssi or (for some) BitchX open and use any IM service, especially without all those anoying alarm bells for message recieved or someone just signed in. Anyway, that's just my two cents.

i have an account on every IM protocol (AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN, Google Talk), but i'm primarily chatting over IRC, not IM so much anymore...when i do IM, most of the people i chat with are on AIM so i guess i use that the most and for a client, i either use Gaim or meebo.com (great web-based multi-protocol client)

Well, I'm over msn ..like always, heh I use it because mostly if not the total of my friends have their hotmail account, msn is the monopoly with the instant messages thing : I just hate the propaganda in it, but there's some sort of patch to avoid it. I've heard yahoo msn is nice, but it's not convenient for me, and no matter who's the best, everybody uses msn.... am I wrong about it?

oscuro wrote:Well, I'm over msn ..like always, heh I use it because mostly if not the total of my friends have their hotmail account, msn is the monopoly with the instant messages thing : I just hate the propaganda in it, but there's some sort of patch to avoid it. I've heard yahoo msn is nice, but it's not convenient for me, and no matter who's the best, everybody uses msn.... am I wrong about it?

it's kinda weird...i think it's that a lot of Canadians use MSN and a lot of US people use AIM...don't know why

but if you want a GREAT MSN client without all the crap in MSN Messenger, i'd definetly say go with Gaim...it's a great open-source, multi protocol, multi-platform chat client

msn for chat
yahoo for webcam

MSN is the easiest one to use, every dummy know how to use it.

I used Jabber (GTalk) some time ago, it wasnt too bad!

sERIAL wrote:MSN is the easiest one to use, every dummy know how to use it.

It's true, that everyone knows how to use MSN and lots of people do because it is the most user frienly IM client and I think MSN wanted it to be that. If you're smarter, though I believe you can get stuff like Messenger Plus and add plugins to it. But, even without Plus!, MSN is a great IM service and I'll use it forever

(I even saw one of my teachers using it at school. He wasn't at his computer and someone was trying to talk to him, so I was just like "fuck off" and i went appear offline. I thought it was pretty funny )