Chat Room Question (poll)

[Morbid]

Our chat room has been seeing more activity sens the site got a little more popular and some new members decided to smoke from the pipe. As anyone who has used our chat room knows...it kinda sucks. But it only cost 5 dollars.

So, the question is, would you guys use a more advanced, professional chat? If so, I have no problems buying it. I know a lot of forum owners hate chats because it takes away from people posting...but I don't give a shit. If you think you will use it say so and vote yes. If not, and you think the one we currently have is fine, then answer no.

By the way, the one I am looking at is called 123Chat (http://www.123flashchat.com). It costs 200 bucks and can integrate into our forum like the one we use now does. It has a lot of cool, but expensive addons as well.

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/2945/20080201092100sp6.jpg

[ZombieBabe]

I voted "Don't really care" but only because it doesn't really matter to me. As long as it's easy and user-friendly, I don't much care what it looks like. Some of the new features might be neat, but sometimes the chatting goes so fast that you can't fiddle around with anything else. Does that make sense?

[Morbid]

Yeah, I understand what you mean, ZB. My issue isn't with the addons as much as it is with getting booted off constantly and having your posts eaten. :)

[impqueen]

i haven't had a huge booting problem, and i'm fine with what we have, so for me it's no big deal if you leave it the way it is.

but then again, it could be a nice investment in the site.

of course, usually most of us chatting are too drunk to care. ;) so if you want a new toy, knock yourself out. If it's gonna be a pain, don't bother just yet. Maybe enough people will want bold type to pay for it pretty soon anyway :)

[Mr_Vindictive]

I feel pretty much the same way as Imp. It's a bit aggravating but not a huge issue. Sure it eats posts on occasion and people get booted on occasion. Other than that, it's not a big problem. A chat with a few upgrades, voice/video chat possibly, would be good but the chat is fine the way it is now.

[WryBread]

I find enough to do on the articles page. Having whined and worked my way into the forum, I'd rather be with the articles. Ungrateful, yes. But I wish the Beemer Boys' Flight with the Angels had been on the articles page. It would have gotten a lot more comments and maybe someone would have been able to post stuff from the myspace pages -- the chance to chat with the witty people who post -- well, who needs icing on the icing?

So my vote is: "don't care."

[gprime]

123Chat is pretty damn nice. Things like the ability to log and publish chats could be handy (if say, we get a cool guest and have some sort of organized chat). It also does a good job of letting you mute people you don't want (could happen) and PMing between chatters. Frankly, any of the better ones (ex: DigiChat, VolcanoChat) cost too much to be worthwhile.

The current chatroom is decent, but could be better. One option to consider might be Flasherize (http://www.flasherize.com/orders/browse_products.php), which is very cheap, but would seem to be an upgrade.