On Fri, Mar 19, 2004 at 01:37:25PM -0500, Gary Hanley wrote:

Ha. I still, for the life of me, have not seen the value-added benefit of IM over a good old-fashioned telephone or conference call.

Just a few reasons from my POV: 1) phones aren't available everywhere, and cell phone coverage is spotty/dead in lots of areas. (for example, inside my company's colo facility...) 2) it's quick and easy if you're already online. need to shoot a command to someone or ask a quick 5 second question? it'll take me longer to find/remember/dial their phone number than it is to goto my IM "buddy" listing and type it. 3) unless you record it, there's no trail of conversations on the phone. I "record" all IM conversations that I have -- really excellent to remember little snippets of information. as an example, I opened a hardware case with IBM the other day, but a coworker was going to be the contact, so I IMed the case # to him. The next day, I needed to call IBM about the case... Without having the conversation "recorded", I'd have had no way to know what the case # was (didn't write it down, and the coworker was unavailable). I've also done this type of thing with conversations I had over a year ago. (this is the same reason I pretty much save all email I send/receive btw...) 4) IM is good for multiple short conversations throughout the day -- my wife/friend/coworker can IM me in the morning, and I can just keep the window open for any thoughts/questions/etc throughout the day. 5) If I'm not around, but someone IMs me a question, I'll see it when I get back to my computer and can respond directly. If someone calls me (see #6 below) I'd either have to tell them to call me back later when I'm at my computer, or they'd leave me voice mail and I'd have to go through the bother of getting the VM then calling back, etc, etc. 6) I can walk away from my IM window and get lunch or something -- if people knew my cell phone number, I'd have yet another electronic leash. 7) I pay for phone calls, I don't pay for IM. If I'm using my home phone (pay per call + per minute) or my cell phone (pay per minute), that costs me money that I normally wouldn't have to pay... Not to mention the fact that sometimes you want to talk to people who aren't local which costs more money. However, I'm already paying for bandwidth no matter how much I use. 8) I usually type more "correctly" than I talk. 9) I spend a lot of time working on open source software (one program specifically), and sometimes need to converse with other developers on the project. I'm here in MA, some are in CA, some in Canada, some in Germany, etc... It's easier to IM than setup a multi-country conference call. 10) if you're on the phone and want to talk to someone else either about the call or something different, then you'd have to hang up and call someone else, or get multiple phones, or ... an example: I was on a con call with several of the above mentioned open source developers, and the legal department of a large company we're conversing with -- but we (developers) wanted to chat during the call without having the other group overhear, so we had an IM chat session going in the background. 11) I don't like using the phone. :P I don't think IM is a replace-all for phones or in-person meetings, but it does better handle/allow a lot of communications in a more efficient manner. IMHO. -- Randomly Generated Tagline: "... although it's better if you call it an osculating circle because nobody knows what it means. Except those smarty-pants math professors..." - Prof. Farr