ICQ down? Alternatives?
 

Since I can remember ICQ has been very popular with people in this business.

Over the last year I've found ICQ to be increasingly unreliable, and now it seems to be having some major technical issues (last 24 hours), what would you say are the alternatives?

Get something like trillian and add icq, msn, aim and yahoo and ask your VIPs to do the same, this way you will most likely always have one of them working.

Same advice here. If you use a Mac, you can try Fire instead of Trillian and add all your icq, aim, msn, yahoo (and other) accounts. Of course, if everyone you know only uses icq, and icq itself is down, then you're still incommunicado until icq comes back up. But if they use some of the other services too, then you'll have a way to reach them. And it's nice having all chat services running in one client (like with Fire, Trillian, and some others).

HTH

It was down for me most of yesterday (MML as well) but it seems to be back to normal today.

seems to be some problems again today :(

trillian is not bad :)

I use Trillian but when Icq then icq is down on Trillian too.

Skype has chat (and is encrypted)

I had the same problem with icq a few weeks back -- however, I couldn't find a list of alternate login servers. But, I couldn't log into icq's web site and manage my account, so, I doubt I could have logged in even with a separate login server.

However, you can always use icq2go from their site IF you can log in on their server. Has a flash or java embedded icq client.

Same here -- Icq has been down since last night for me.. i blame bush.

Doesn't Trillian use the ICQ servers? (meaning that if ICQ is fucked, Trillian will be fucked for ICQ contacts as well)

How about AIM. There is a also a Linux and Mac version plus it also talks with ICQ and iChat.

Torn and I started using Skype a few weeks ago and love it! We rarely use ICQ if we can help it. It very helpful when trying to conduct business with more then one person, we just conference them in.

Paltolk is good also

I never really liked Skype but I can't really put my finger on why.

I use a program called QIP and have been using it for about 9 months now and I have noticed that it works a lot better then ICQ and I have never had a problem with it. It is set up exactly like ICQ and other then being connected better using it you won't see much difference

and they have neato keen skins too


spaz

We could do lunch |thumb

Skype is working very well for me |thumb

Skype is great (maybe better) but ICQ will be no.1 for a long time in this industry

Trillian Pro is a fantastic piece of software, I just wish they would add msn into fit or the few that still use it.

I have been using ICQ for quite a long time and it has been giving me a headache sometimes but it is still the most popular one. Skype is more reliable but it has not that community feeling ;) so I'll stick at ICQ for a while

Gmail all the way. They have that chat feature that allows you to chat with other people who have gmail. It's also not so obtrusive.