MODULE 2 - CHAT TASK

Finally, I was able to participate in not one but two chat mediums for the purpose of completing the tasks required in Module 2.

I will start with MSN. MSN was a chat medium that I was familiar with as had used it previously. Joining me online were a few fellow Net11 students who were quite friendly and communicative.

We discussed many things and all agreed that MSN was similar to the other chat mediums. Some of the advantages we spoke about was,

• the flexibility to be able to utilise it for important things like university study


• assists users to "keep in touch" with those separated by distance


• MSN functions such as cam and audio allowed one to actually see the person on the other end


• MSN allowed private conversations


• user friendly,easy to download and use


• cheap method of communication as most people nowadays have access to a computer and the net and writing letters apart from been bothersome can be costly depending on destination.


• allowed the exchange of photo's and music


• MSN's ability to be able to block and delete those users that you do not wish to interact with.
  

Some of the disadvantages would be,

• the amount of advertising that hovers around the program


• the frustration and disappointment experienced when some of the features that are supposed to benefit the users don't actually work IE games, web cam,audio etc.


• the many windows for conversing with more than one person


• the privacy and security issues, where anyone can decide to add you

Overall I found MSN to be easy to install and use and would not hesitate to use it again. Adding contacts was also easy and everything worked from first go.

ICQ on the other hand was interesting. After trying to add contacts without success, I decided to reinstall ICQ again. This time around I manually customised it but kept the ICQ tool bar option. Bingo, it actually worked, I was able to add contacts with no problems.

I need not have worried about missing out on today's session in ICQ as my lovely Net 11 fellow students added me anyway after reading about my troubles on the webct discussion board.

Some of the disadvantages mentioned on ICQ were;

• Privacy , Security and Time.
• By the time you finished typing, another topic had started
• Too many conversations taking place at once
• Confusion created

The advantages were not discussed but we did discuss some topic's off the webct Discussion Board such as "Is The Net Reality". It was interesting reading the different opinions. We also discussed other mediums like Facebook,twitter etc.

In conclusion I would like to say that I was happy to finally experience ICQ so thanks NET11 for giving me the opportunity and overall found that MSN definitely offers more functions and tools. I liked the layout of both mediums and found them both to be similar operational wise except for the cam and audio functions.