There are so many different programs that clutter up your desktop and icon bar, every program using up your precious resources! How much faster would your PC if you could run one single program as opposed to three or more instant messenger clients?
Let me give you an example of how much resources are eaten up by using a couple of instant messenger (IM) clients.
On a normal day I have two instant messenger clients running at any given time, both of these programs use up hard drive storage space, memory resources and cpu processes. MSN 7.0 loads roughly 14.5 megabytes in to memory as it's running, ICQ 5 Lite uses about 11.9 megabytes of ram. That's around 26 MB of ram that you are using just to have them sit idle in your icon tray! So these programs use three major resources on your system, memory, hard drive storage space, and cpu processes! If you computer isn't top of the line you might start to feel the lag caused by all these additional programs. Guess what? There is something you can do about it!
Some people have developed their own instant messenger client that will let you combine other networks all in to one handy client!
Linux has several really great programs that do this for your system, Gaim, and KoPete are two that I have used on a regular basis in the past. However, I never really found one that I liked for Windows, until just recently!
I've been testing a copy of Instan-t Messenger v4.5 from Interactive Networks Inc. and quite frankly I believe it is the best combine messenger client that I've come across for Windows.
Instan-t Messenger has many great features, as I mentioned above it combines several clients in to one handy client. Instan-t supports MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, and it's own network. I ran the Instan-t client with MSN, ICQ and their network loaded and it took up a mere 16.2 MB of memory while loaded, which is significantly less than running the other two clients!
Instan-t Messenger is a great way to breathe a little life in to an older over tasked PC and give you an exciting new way to clean up some of those huge tray icons that seem to develop. It's about 6.2 MB to download their program, it's simple to install and is really worth checking out. My only critique of their program is the sorting options of contacts. I feel it's a bit clumsy and takes quite a bit of time to setup the way I want. Also, you can't "hide" offline clients, they just dim the icon. I hope that perhaps that can be rectified in future versions of this program.
Happy IM'ing!
Ken Dennis
http://KenDennis-RSS.homeip.net/