![]() There are ads on the buddy list and in your chat window… unless you choose an alternate client (read on).ĪIM is actually offers some of the best interoperability going. AIM supports both person-to-person IM as well as multi-person IM conferencing or group chats.ĭid I say AIM was free? What I should have said is that you won't pay for the privilege of using it, but you will have to tolerate ads. You don't need to be an AOL subscriber in order to sign-up to download and use AIM.ĪOL Instant Messenger has full range of features, including video and voice chat, status messages, logging and buddy icons (avatars). Introduced in 1997, AIM is one of the most popular IM programs with over 60 million users. AIM is available on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. AIM has also been far more stable over the past two years than Mirabilis’ versions of ICQ ( Gerry’s ICQ is significantly better).AOL Instant Messenger, or simply AIM, is a free instant messenger service. AIM’s standard buddy chat interface is much more mature than ICQ’s, file-swapping is easier, and conversations with buddies can be saved. That said, I prefer AIM to ICQ simply because I find it much easier to use. A friend and I have been working on isolating the cause of this bug, but despite a few hours of testing, we have found nothing conclusive. The fonts used in the menu bar and window title bars will suddenly go bold for seemingly no reason restarting is the only cure. Last, but perhaps most annoying, is the strange “bold system font” bug caused by a certain set of circumstances existing while having an IM Image connection open. This isn’t so much a bug as a lack of a useful feature. One major disadvantage to AIM over its biggest competitor, ICQ, is the lack of capability for sending messages to contacts who are not online at the time you send the message. I consider this limitation both unnecessary and poorly implemented. When you try to go beyond 160 Buddies, however, the application doesn’t tell you why the Add Buddy button is suddenly grayed out. Buddy Lists, which used to be limited to 100 Buddies (and would mysteriously truncate the list at 100 if you added more), are now capped at 160 Buddies. ![]() As I mentioned, the voice chat feature is nearly useless. There are a few quirky problems with AIM. I’ve found this feature to be quite useful when discussing business matters, because the three of us can all discuss in real-time instead of waiting for one person to relay messages back and forth. The multi-user Chat feature of AIM is quite a different story, however it allows several people to talk at once in a dynamically created “chat room” on AOL’s servers. While it’s somewhat tolerable over T1 lines if both users are in the same general area, 56K modem users or users in different countries will likely find it useless for voice chat. I’ve used it a fair bit, and I’m sad to say that its quality is severely lacking. I use it to keep in touch with friends back home while I’m in Australia on study abroad, as well as discuss business matters with my two business partners back in the US.ĪIM also has a voice chat feature. You can discuss business, shoot the breeze, or even exchange photographs over an Internet connection with anyone else who also has AIM. * The AIM 4.0.x application bundled with some distributions of Netscape is 68K-compatible.ĪIM is an invaluable conferencing tool for doing business on the Internet or trying to keep in touch with someone far away. The service is supported by the small ads AOL displays at the top of your Buddy List window while you’re online. It is a PowerPC-only application (68K support was dropped with version 4*) and requires about 6 MB of disk space and 6 MB of RAM. The current version of AIM is, although for all practical purposes 4.2 is sufficient to describe the version number. ![]() Buddies can also be “idle” (no activity at the computer for 10 minutes) or “away” (the Buddy puts up a message to this effect). When a Buddy is online, the Buddy’s name will appear in the category you assign the Buddy to. You can look up users by name or email address, then add them to a list of users called your Buddy List. 2000 – America Online’s Instant Messenger (AIM) is one of a host of chat applications that has become part of an Internet user’s standard suite of tools in the past two years.įor those of you not familiar with the program, it allows you to carry on real-time chat with one or more other people (termed Buddies by AOL) elsewhere on the Internet by typing at your keyboard. ![]()
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