Buyer's Guide

Instant Messengers

Published: 28 Feb 2002

We live to chat. Every minute of the working day (and often well into the night), we're watching to see who's talking online and who dares to log off the computer. But why can't the people who create instant messaging (IM) clients make it easier for us to chat with everyone? For a long time, we've pleaded for a way to combine our contact lists, but IM-makers just don't seem to listen.

So should you jump from messenger to messenger to find the right one? Or should you just stick with a battered old version of your favourite IM? To get a handle on the current IM situation, we lined up eight top messengers -- AOL Instant Messenger, Eyeball Chat, ICQ, Jabber Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Odigo, Trillian and Yahoo Messenger -- in a side-by-side comparison.

Trillian 0.71

Editors Choice For now, Trillian is our favourite IM client, bar none. Download it today if you use more than one of the Big Four instant messengers. [19 Feb 2002]

Product	Date	Editors' Rating	Readers' Rating
MSN Messenger 4.6	[19 Feb 2002]	6.4	6.5
Odigo 3.1	[19 Feb 2002]	6.0
Yahoo Messenger 5.0	[19 Feb 2002]	6.6	8.0
AOL Instant Messenger Beta 4.8	[18 Feb 2002]	5.2	4.5
Eyeball Chat 2.0	[18 Feb 2002]	5.6	8.0
ICQ 2001b 5.18	[18 Feb 2002]	7.0
JabberIM 1.10.0.6	[18 Feb 2002]	5.2
Product	Date	Editors' Rating	Readers' Rating