Lots of us have more than just one computer in the home. And with instant messenger apps, that unfortunately means only one computer can use a single IM account at a time.

For example, if you use Yahoo Messenger and login to one PC in the home, then use the same account to login with on another, it will "kick off" the first one.

You can have multiple logins per single account on just about any messenger service, but it’s all dependent on what software you use.

AIM

The AIM service does allow multiple logins per single account. The best software to use to take advantage of this feature is AIM Lite or Pidgin.

AIM Lite by default has this enabled, but with Pidgin you have to check a box:

…and then you’re good to go.

Windows Live Messenger

The current version of WL Messenger does allow simultaneous logins. There should be no special setup necessary to make this work, however the only drawback is that you must use the same software on all computers that connect.

For example, if one PC uses Windows Live Messenger and the other Pidgin, WL Messenger will boot off Pidgin and vice versa.

Everything else

The absolute easiest way I have found to have same-account logins on multiple computers is by using the Meebo Notifier. This is Windows-only software but it works fantastic. The app acts as a gateway of sorts to the web interface, but has a nice n’ tidy icon in the taskbar to notify you of new messages on as many computers as you want.

Meebo will configure any IM account you can possibly think of.

The only drawback I found is that if you put one of the computers in hibernation (typical for a laptop), it will log out Meebo on the other PCs in your home network. But other than that it works flawlessly.

And yes, this is a bit of a hybrid between web-based IM and client-based, but it does work and that’s the whole point.

What about Jabber?

While it’s true Jabber will allow a "login as many times as you want anywhere" type of IM, setup is annoying for non-XMPP messaging services.

In Windows (or Mac OS X or Linux), you’d most likely use the Psi messenger which easily allows for XMPP connectivity. But after than you have to find a Jabber server that allows for non-XMPP IM service "transport", and that’s the annoying part.

So you go to the Jabber server list, connect up to a server, perform a service discovery and see if the protocol you want is available for transport. If it’s not available, you have to move on to the next server. Hunt, peck, hunt, peck.. it’s annoying. And there’s no guarantee the server will be there tomorrow or even prove to be reliable when working.

Jabber is truly awesome. I’m not kidding. This is why Google Talk uses that protocol. And it would be great if all other IM services adopted the protocol as well. But that isn’t the case currently, so we’ll have to stick with what’s useful for us.