ICQ is a program that I have been using for many years. It started off as a instant messaging program and still is today, but now with loads of features. You can do practically anything, send SMS to people, chat, message, send files, use loads of plugins, etc. I use it to talk to my friends whilst I am online. Basically you have a list of people who you talk to, your ’’contact list’’, and on here you can see if the person is online (in various different forms, eg. occupied, free to chat, out to lunch, etc..) or offline. Then you can send them messages or a load of other things. Messages are almost always delivered immediately which is great when talking to someone.
The best part about it is that it is free, although in the latest versions there are now adverts that are displayed are you are sending messages (although not popping up, just part of the message sending window). The only problem with this program that I would say is that it has become quite complex. Now that it has so many features you can get a big bewildered by all of the options on the menus, and it can take some time to find the feature that you want. Connectivity is excellent though, it hasn’t been unavailable for the last 3 months I have been constantly using it.