AOL Instant Messenger is an instant chat programme and the software can be downloaded at no cost from https://aol.com/aim. You don’t have to be using AOL as your Internet provider to take advantage as AOL users have their own form of the software built in already. Anybody can download and use this, and AOL members may even want to try it too as it contains many more features than the one included as standard.
It’s an excellent piece of kit, offering the user a number of fun and interesting features and is ideal for novices too as the user interface is very straightforward. My mother has to be one of the most technically challenged people I know (sorry Mum!) and she took to this like a duck to water.
AOL IM can be personalised to suit your own preferences in a number of ways. You can add a ‘buddy icon’ to your chats, which is an image of your choice that is displayed on the chat boxes of your friends, as they talk to you online. These can be animated if you like, although you are restricted with size and you can change them as often as you see fit! You can also change your font, font colour and size, and also background colours to suit your own personal tastes.
‘Emoticons’ are great fun to use during your nattering, little faces that offer a good range of emotions to include happy, sad, tearful, angry, sticking out tongue, kissing etc. and can be great fun to add some emotion and humour to your chatting experience!
AOL IM allows you to send files and images to your friends in two different ways, either by sending the file as a transfer so that the recipient downloads it onto their computer and views it once the file has completed it’s transfer, or you can use the ‘direct connect’ facility which allows you to send graphics files to your pals instantly, with the picture actually being displayed in the chat box itself.
Voice chat is included, by accessing the ‘talk’ link but of course both users require both a sound card and a microphone to take advantage. This allows you to have real ‘voice to voice’ conversations with your friends and the sound quality does vary but is generally pretty good.
You can search for new friends to chat to, either by their personal details if you know them, or random new contacts through shared interests. If you want privacy, there are a number of options available including that much needed ‘block’ facility to ward off the nasty ‘what colour is your underwear darling?’ type of user we have all unfortunately come across. You can also choose just to allow those users on your ‘buddy list’ to contact you so that folks wanting random chats can’t reach you.
Your buddy list is used to store permanently the usernames of the friends you like to chat to often, and shows at a glance whether they are online or offline. You can sort them under appropriate group headings if you wish, friends, family, colleagues etc. If there are a number of you using the same computer, each member of the family can have his/her own username and password and his/her own buddy list.
If you have a lot of buddies online at the same time, you can invite them to join you in a multi-user chat room where you can all chat away happily together. Especially useful for people who share the same interests or belong to mailing lists as you can all get together to thrash out the latest hot topic!
All in all, this messenger program is one of the best currently available. The program can slow up quite dramatically during very busy times, and you may find problems logging in on the rare occasion, but usually it runs fairly efficiently with no major problems. Messages travel between you and your pals very quickly and the program should appeal to just about everybody.
I have just the one little gripe, as yet AOL IM doesn’t allow you to send offline messages to your friends as ICQ does for example, but I guess email takes care of that anyway. Overall, I heartily recommend it! Oh, and if anybody wants to drop by and say hello, my username is Micaramba…..I’ll keep a look out for you!