icq.com

There was a point at which ICQ was a cool and natty little program that told you when your mates were online. In the days before free calls and free ISPs, those were few and far between and this novelty app grew in popularity.

One day, however, it decided that it was going to run your computer and run your life. From that point on it turned from a natty little program into a giant (in internet app terms), bloated piece of detritus. Fair enough, it still performs its main function - telling you when your mates are about and letting you send them instant messages. But alongside that (which I find pointless now most of my friends are on 24/7) ICQ has its own crude email reader, SMS Messager, address book, games launcher, To Do list, notepad, calendar...

If I want to read emails I will run Outlook, which does the job well. If I want to wrote notes, I'll use notepad. If I wanted to make dire cartoony icons I would use MS Paint or something similarly tragic. What I don't want is one little, admittedly free, program that tries to do absolutely everything, to the extent to which it is no longer very well navigable, let alone tolerable.

I'm abandoning 102029395 to go an find an identity I can take pride in, with LineOne Messanger or similar. I suggest you do the same, unless you have a penchant for desktop clutter and immature program layout design that was doodled by a 12 year old American schoolgirl in her atlas cover, whilst everyone else was learning why the English speak American.