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.