I’ve determined that my problems with Colossus are actually the fault of the monitor. I don’t know why it started happening only when I installed the SSD drive, but it seems that it is just a coincidence. Apparently, something is wrong with the monitor’s power supply, and it fails to power on when it’s supposed to. If I leave it on all the time, it works. But if I turn it off for a long period of time, like when I sleep, it won’t power on after that. For now, I’ve found  a temporary solution. I can unplug the power for a few minutes and then it usually works for the rest of the day. I decided to get a new monitor, I ordered it last week,  and it’s supposed to arrive by next week.

Now about ICQ7 again. It seems that they’ve started displaying real advertising in ICQ now, they just started today. I had wondered when that would happen. Now those spaces for ads are actually used for what they’re intended.

Also, I did some digging into the SQLite database that ICQ7 uses for the message history and so on. While its layout looks similar to the older Access database used by ICQ6, I ran into an unusual result for the date field. Apparently, it’s a sort of Julian date format, but it starts after the year 1900, possibly to save space by having a shorter date. It’s an interesting choice, but it doesn’t really matter. It still works fine.

Anyway, here are the various formats used for message history that ICQ has used over the years:

• ICQ2003b: FoxPro database
• ICQ5: XML files?
• ICQ 6 / ICQ 6.5: Microsoft Access database
  
• ICQ7: SQLite 3 database
  

I personally feel that databases work much better for this purpose, as long as they can be compacted and repaired when necessary. XML files aren’t good at all for saving the message history in my opinion. I know that Windows Live Messenger uses XML files, and it can be frustrating because they don’t save the messages before the conversation is over. If the program crashes, you lose the entire history of that conversation. With a database, the messages can be stored immediately when they arrive, or are sent, and that saves them even if the program crashes during the conversation. They have also limited the size of the message history XML files, so it has to create a new one when it’s too big! That’s a real inconvenience. Microsoft made Access, so why not use it for their Messenger message history?

So while I don’t always agree with what the ICQ programmers choose to do, I think they made the right decision in choosing the databases for both ICQ6 and ICQ7.

I received the OCZ Agility 30GB SSD yesterday. The Purolator man came by in the afternoon while my parents were away, so I had to sign for it. I don’t know why they use those electronic devices, it’s impossible to sign properly on those, and it seemed that half the screen was affected by the cold and may have been frozen. It made a crazy line that shot up when I attempted to write my last name…

So my bad luck started then. I decided to wait until the evening to install the drive. What should have been simple and should have taken 15-30 minutes or so ended in disaster. There was nothing wrong with the drive, though. It’s the machine that was the problem. As soon as it booted up, the monitor would not stay powered on, it alternated between a blank screen and power off. I tried both monitors, and although the second one managed to stay on until part of Windows loading was completed, it also powered off the same way.

After trying the obvious, like removing the drive, I thought it was the video card that was causing this. But it was about 1:30AM by the time I figured out that I wasn’t going to solve it for a while, so I went to bed.

I tested the video card in Terminator, and to my surprise, it worked just fine. I reinstalled it in Colossus, but same as before, no power on the monitor.  I was puzzled. I decided to remove one memory module, and it  seemed to solve the problem. The monitor stayed on! I thought that the module was bad because of this, but after trying the other one in its slot, it didn’t work… as before. So I moved both modules to the other two slots that the manual says not to use when only 2 modules are installed. I have no idea why they say so. But it works fine now. Those DDR RAM slots are really hard to install modules into, though. I hate them, they shouldn’t require the force of Colossus to push them in. I hope I won’t have to touch them anymore.

The OCZ SSD is fast, so I’m glad I got it. It’s just unfortunate that I had to go through all this when I installed it. Maybe moving the case loosened the RAM, or something happened to the slot one module was in somehow. It was a nightmare, but it’s over now.

ICQ7 has been released.  ICQ7 seems to have been designed to copy some of the design features of Windows Live Messenger, and they might have rushed it out to be the first to have the social networking features integrated in the program, many of which Windows Live Messenger has been rumored to include in the next version. ICQ is going to lose its unique qualities if it becomes no more than a Windows Live Messenger imitation, however. This makes me wonder if they’re planning to allow communicating with users of Windows Live Messenger in the future. Dropping the statuses to be the same could be a clue to this possibility.

One thing that surprised me was that they changed the database engine yet again. This time it went from Microsoft Access to SQLite. Now SQLite is probably fine, it’s just that another change is annoying, since it’s incompatible with the previous database, and you have to import the message history (at least they allow this). And it just makes more work for me…

So here is my list of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good:

• Spell-check is still there.
• The smileys are the same as in ICQ6.
• Most of the options from ICQ6 have remained.
• The color scheme can easily be changed. Just like in Windows Live.
• Xtras removed. While it was a good concept in theory, the Xtras were a failure, and it’s good that this feature is gone.

The bad:

• Sometimes a bit slow and momentarily unresponsive.
• No send button from the message window. There is plenty of room for it. Really, does everything have to be like Windows Live Messenger?
• Statuses have been reduced to only these 4:  “available”,”away”,”busy”,”invisible”.
• Status messages, again more like those in Windows Live Messenger, dropping the unique status icons that made this feature stand out in previous versions.

The ugly:

• All avatars / display pictures don’t scale properly in most parts of the program, the exception being in the message window.
• The message window copies Windows Live Messenger’s message window style for the most part, except it’s uglier. Instead of giving the program a look that follows Windows 7, for example, it looks more like it belongs in Linux.  They moved the avatars / display pictures to the left side too,  just like in Windows Live Messenger.
• The buttons for the smileys, spell-check, etc. are blended into the chat window and look dull.
• Profiles have been reduced to very basic information plus social news feeds. You have to go to the website to view the rest.
• Ads: Why have advertising all over the place when it’s only to advertise ICQ on ICQ? What’s the point of that?

So, in the end, I will stick with ICQ6.5. I have to say that while I don’t like ICQ7 that much right now, they still did a pretty good job on it. At least the features are there, and they all work pretty well. I remember when the first version of ICQ6 was released — how bad that was — it was shocking, and this is better than that for sure. But I still feel that they could have done better in some areas.