LOL I have heard this many times before. ICQ is the chosen method for chatting because it was the only reliable method when many of us first started in the biz, and now its like a hangover that just won't go away.

I know a few people who removed ICQ out of frustration, only to install it again within a week or two. I used to run ICQ 2003b up until a few months ago in order to avoid all the advertising, you can still download it and it works fine for chat...maybe that's a solution for you?

By the way, the reason I upgraded a few months back to the latest version was because the old 2003b version could only handle a limited number of contacts, and I was over that number!