David Akin's On the Hill :: Instant messaging: I'm going with iChat

Gemini Award-winning reporter David Akin is the National Affairs Correspondent for Canwest News Service and is based at the CNS Parliamentary Bureau in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
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Instant messaging: I'm going with iChat

by DavidAkin on Wed 02 Jun 2004 08:46 PM EDT | Permanent Link | Cosmos

As a reporter, I feel duty bound to try use everyone's applications as much as possible but I've decided that when it comes to instant messaging, I'm going to favour one product over the other. The winner, if you will, is iChat from Apple. You'll be able to find me on iChat at jdavidakin@mac.com . AIM and ICQ users should be able to see me there as iChat is compatible with America Online's instant messaging protocols (I may be misinformed on this. If so -- let me know. ) I'm going to try have iChat up and running just about any time I'm in front of a computer. I will also likely have Yahoo's Instant Messenger where my handle is davidakin2372. I'm pegging it as my number two IM client. Finally, if you're nuts to chat on it and don't have anything else installed, send me e-mail and Ill fire up MSN Messenger. Otherwise my presence on MSN Messenger -- where I log in as dakin@ctv.ca -- will be intermittent. I make these choices not necessarily to recommend one client over the other but I find MSN Messenger drops the network connection too frequently to be useful. Moreover, if I'm using a portable, as I often am, I may lose a network connection as I move about. iChat automatically logs you back in. Yahoo and MSN do not. There are some other interface and useability issues that make me prefer iChat to the others. What I don't like about the whole kit and kaboodle is that these software vendors cannot agree on one standard to make their IM and chat networks compatible. Can't we all just get along so that it matters not what IM client I choose? Please? One of the things I like about both iChat and Yahoo is the ability to set up custom status messages. You may be able to do that with MSN Messenger by editing your public profile but to edit your public profile, I have to fire up a Web browser and log in to MSN's Passport site. Personally, I've never found the whole Passport idea to be much use. Some may have but I'm not one of them. If I want to change profiles or any other preferences for my IM environment, I'd rather just do it within the application and not have to launch another application to do it. So there you have it: Love to add you to my buddy list on iChat or Yahoo Messenger but you're going to have to be a real special buddy to get me to fire up MSN Messenger.

Keywords: connectivity, Apple

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