ICQ 6 Features (new and old)

ICQ 6 What's New states our latest and greatest features in this version are Quick IM, Grouped Conversations, Advanced Search, Easy Access to Unread Messages, History Miner, 2 Way SMS, A New Experience of Voice and Video.. some of which appeal to me personally, and some not, Quick IM was perfectly me as with Grouped Conversations.

Quick IM (new)
Quick IM is a dream come true! Just click the speech bubble beside the contacts name on your friends list, a text field option instantly appears, type your message, hit enter and you're away...

Quick IM button	Quick IM Text field

Their reply will show in a toast window directly above your system tray, where you can then reply directly or if you wish to launch a full blow IM session just click on the toast window and your entire conversation will now be readily available with the full range of features.

Quick IM Toast Window

Grouped Conversations (new)
Grouped Conversations, or tabbed Instant Messenger sessions, are a nice feature, but to be honest it's nothing new in the IM world, in saying that though I am really please that ICQ have implemented this in ICQ 6. Thankfully the feature itself is super quick and It's dead easy to break away (separate) an individual IM session from a group, just click on the icon to the right of your IM window

To incorporate a single session back into the group, just click the icon to the right if your window, directly above your friends avatar, the IM session instantly returns to the grouped session. One thing I would find helpful is being able to run grouped tabs, that being, if I have multiple conversations running with friends and colleagues, it would be nice to be able to Group all my friends together and then all my colleagues together, at the moment it seems you can only break away individual conversations. This feature in itself is incredibly useful though as you can put your best friend, or in my case the most active conversation at the time, in it's own Instant Messenger window so you can quickly devote time and attention to it without having to locate it in your grouped session. I found it a tad frustrating to not have the ability to quickly sort my grouped tabs, a great feature would have been to click and drag your tabs into a desired postion but alas this isn't an option. If you need to reorganise your tabs you will have to break them away into individual IM windows then bring them back into the group in the desired left to right order.

One of the nice touches that you will find in your grouped session is that you can easily see what IM program (ICQ or AIM) your friend is using at the time, as you can see from the screenshot below,

(from left to right) beeageek is on AIM as with beesitoy, beesitoy is on ICQ as with stickercam

There is also little confusion with regard to what features are available /supported with your friends

Currently Available Features
IM	SMS	Voice Call	Video Call	Phone Call	File Transfer

Supported features have full colour icons, those not available or currently supported across platforms or IM client are faded.

Voice Call feature
Available	Not Supported

The icon availablity doesn't indicate why the features are / aren't supported (e.g. application, version or platform compatibility) but it certainly takes the guess work out of what you can and can't do and share...

beeageek AIM (Windows)

Supported Features: IM, SMS, Voice Call, Video Call, Phone Call, File Transfer

beesitoy on AIM (actually iChat for Mac)

Supported Features: IM, SMS, Voice Call, Video Call, Phone Call, File Transfer

beesitoy is on ICQ (Mac)

Supported Features: IM, SMS, Voice Call, Video Call, Phone Call, File Transfer see WackyB.info ICQ for Mac for more information about ICQ's Mac offering

stickercam on ICQ (Windows)

Supported Features: IM, SMS, Voice Call, Video Call, Phone Call, File Transfer

Typing Indicator (old)
Typing Indicators are so handy, with ICQ 6 you still get the text based typing indicator in your active IM session windows (directly above your own text input field) but the great thing about ICQ 6 and the Grouped (Tabbed) Conversation window is that you get an instant icon change (the ICQ flower will overlay a keyboard) to the named tab show that one of your friends is typing a message to you, as shown by the tab that stickercam is located in...

This feature works well (and is extremely reliable) across all the supported clients (AIM, ICQ, iChat) and platforms (Windows and Mac) which was a pleasant surprise.

Login Options (revamped)
Boy was I confused by this one and while I now see how the option works, I'm still unsure why it would work this way. Basically you can select to Login as ICQ Standard, so you select this from the drop down menu, then you can select from Online, Away, N/A (Not Available) or Occupied all of which are logical. What had me stumped the Invisible options, if you select Invisible you can then select to login as Invisible Online, Invisible Away, Invisible N/A (Not Available) or Invisible Occupied... I guess in hindsight this allows you to login as invisible and occupied at the same time which means friends who you have allowed to see your Invisible status, will also be aware that you're Occupied as well... it kinda makes sense.. but also doesn't, I guess in time it will all become clear, personally I would rather have had the stock standard choices of Online, Away, N/A (Not Available), Occupied or Invisible rather than the invisible variations.. but each to their own :)

ICQ Standard Login Options	ICQ Invisible Login Options

WebCam (and Voice)
Webam and voice worked also worked well across the clients and platforms supported, the image quality was excellent and the current status was clear and precise as the connection was established. As with Grouped sessions you can also throw your webcam view out of the grouped tab or even out of an individual IM session, this alone is a great feature as not everyone wants their IM text sessions and webcams lumped together. The cam in cam feature is also really nice as you can see your own cam (the smaller image) inside the currently viewed cam but where is the option to remove your cam preview if you want to?

Two issues really ticked me off though:
1. Camera source... where oh where are these settings?! I use multiple webcams and I like to be able to select on the fly which I'd prefer to use at the time. ICQ 6 seems to default to your last used or what Windows throws back as the default. Greatly frustrating if you wish to switch from one webcam to another or even to a virtual cam.... grrr! The only way I found around this was to launch another IM program, select and use the webcam, exit out of that program then relaunch ICQ again at which point it defaulted to the last used (one I wanted in the first place). I'm feeling a bit daft about the experience as there must be an easier way to do this... but for now it escapes me *blush*
2. There seems to be no option to have a straight text based IM session and run my webcam minus voice. I don't want to have to call someone or have to have voice as a feature just because I want to share my webcam... yes I can mute voice but why oh why is there no option to just have webcam / video and NO voice? Clearly I must be missing something obvious again *blush*

In Summary
Give me back ICQ Pro! :( To be fair though, it's still early days and I really haven't given it a good run, I guess I just expect more... or something new.. or different. I felt there was a fair bit of hype about this "new" version and what it would offer... but for me personally it's fallen a little short... but time will tell as I really am still in mourning. BTW,ICQ have invited user to post feedback about their latest version or if you feel so inclined you can wade your way through the official ICQ 6 Message Board and read what others have to say about ICQ 6 :)