iChat and ICQ

Just a quick question about iChat as I will be switching to Mac soon. My girlfriend IM's using ICQ. I personally use AIM now and that's fine because it works with ICQ. However, once I go to college with me new macbook pro, I won't have AIM as an option. I read that iChat is compatible with AIM, but is it transitively compatible with ICQ as well? If so, is video chat with ICQ possible from iChat, too? If not, is there another app that would work? Thanks for the help.

Apparently you can add ICQ users to your iChat buddy list, but you can't log in with an ICQ account yourself. There are text formatting issues though. See this link for more details.

Video chat is going to be pretty much out of the question, it seems, between AIM and ICQ. In fact, aside from iChat (for AIM users), your options are pretty scarce. Yahoo Messenger is the only other one I know of.

There is a client called Adium that is very popular. It supports ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, and so on. No video support yet, though it is coming soon. And Trillian is alpha testing a port of their Windows IM client that will do A/V also.

You should have no problem using iChat as a basic ICQ client. There's also an actual ICQ client for the Mac, as well as the multi-network clients like Adium.

Let me rephrase the question. In your opinion, what is the best (free) option to set up a video chat session bewteen my mac to my girlfriend's pc?

From what I've been reading it seems that you can video chat between icq and ichat. I've never actually tested it out though.

If that fails, there's always Skype. You can Video chat Skype to Skype for free.

Or your girlfriend could get AIM. Is that still free to get an AIM screenname? Haven't looked into AIM in a long time.

But there are plenty of options for free video chats.