Review For: Easy Messenger Express 2.3 Site Link: http://www.easymessage.net  Download Link: http://download.com.com/3000-2150-10069692.html  Compatibility: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP Date Reviewed: February 20, 2004 Written By: Webmaster Christopher Beley Rating: (actually 3.5 out of 5 stars :-)

     Well, I have been looking for a nice all in one messenger and I first came across Gaim.  I had nothing but troubles with this (probably works a lot better on Linux) and gave up with it quickly.  A little after that, (month or so after) I came across this application, and I have to say that for free this application is wonderful.

     When you first run the application you get a simple little wizard that comes up, allowing you to add all of your accounts to the program.  Once you do that, you will see all the people you have, in all of your accounts, in one program.

     When you run the program, you may notice the design is very similar to MSN Messenger.  For example, the window that pops up over the icon on your task bar notifying you that someone has come online or that you have received a new E-Mail, looks almost the same as in MSN Messenger, except for the little Easy Messenger logo appearing in the corner instead of the MSN Messenger logo.  Another example would be is that the chat windows also look very similar to MSN Messenger's chat windows.  Basically the whole point of this paragraph is that this program, has functionality and looks good. :-) 

Problems
     For every good thing, there seems to be at least one problem.  Nothing is perfect unfortunately :-(  The problem with this program is the groups.  The first major problem is, you can't select multiple users and then drag them all into a new group.  You have to drag each person individually into the group you want them in.  The second problem is, if the group that you want to drag someone into isn't fitting on the screen, you can't easily drag a person to that group.  For example, in other Messengers, the bar will scroll down (or up) automatically when you try to drag a person to a group not visible on your screen.  The second to last problem is that when it imports your groups from your other messenger accounts, it doesn't always work right (or doesn't work how most people would want it to work) and finally, the program will sometimes mess up your groups in your different Messenger accounts, and this can be very annoying, however, this will only happen if you try to do stuff in groups in the program, itself.  So my rule of thumb is, "Don't mess with groups until there is a fix to this and just set the view mode (right click anywhere) to "sort by offline/online".

     So in conclusion, I highly recommend this program to anyone who uses multiple messengers, because there are some definite advantages to this program.  For example, some other good things about this application would be: it's only a 250K download, it will use less RAM than running all of the different Messengers at the same time, there are no ads in the program, and finally, it's all free.;-)  Also, don't let my score scare you from getting this program, I just had to give it a 3.5 instead of a 5.0, because of that big flaw.  I have to keep my guidelines the same for everything you know ;-)