i'm a big sentimental packrat. i have every single note written to me by girls in high-school, and some even from middle school. i have all my yearbooks from middle school with all the little signatures and stupid things people wrote.
i have every email sent to me since like 1996. i also have some saved that i sent to others. it's like my way of keeping a journal, really. i've looked back at some of my older emails from time to time, and i can really see how i've changed since those days. at the same time, older stuff like that can really get me reminiscing about "the good old days." so much has changed in my life since high-school and before.
when it comes to online chat conversations, i have saved some from time to time. i have about 20 or so very special ones that i had with mikayla when we were first dating. i *love* to have those saved. it's like a snapshot of my life. i also have some other odd ones saved that either freaked me out, or made me laugh.
if i were to lose any or all of this stuff, i'd be fine, but, man, that would suck.
p.s. some older versions of AIM automatically log every conversation, and ICQ logs everything too
i have never seen icq log, i started using it in 96 but stopped around 97 and it didnt do it back then, nor have i seen aim do it either.
yeah, the later version of icq have the feature, and aim had it in the very first betas of version 4.x something, but it was removed after like 3 versions.