Those who have more than one computer in the home sometimes wish for a way to have IM (that’s Instant Messaging by the way) accounts logged into all the computers at once.
Why?
Because it’s a pain to keep logging out/in every time you switch computer boxes.
Example scenario: You have one computer in the living room and the other in the basement. For whatever computer you’re using at the time, you have to login to IM and then it "kicks off" the other – or – doesn’t allow it, so you have to log out from the first one and login to the second or vice versa.
This can get annoying very quickly.
The solution is to use a service that allows simultaneous logins from multiple locations.
There are a few ways to get a single IM account logged into multiple locations when you know specifically how to do it.
AIM (http://www.aim.com)
Can login to multiple locations with single login? Yes.
The AOL Instant Messenger does in fact allow simultaneous logins from more than one location – but only if you use a very specific client, that being AIM Lite. This is a "barebones" version of AIM but it’s enough to get the job done. It’s available for both Windows and Mac.
Using any other IM client (even the freebies like Trillian and Pidgin) will not allow multiple logins with a single account. AIM Lite is the only one that allows it.
Google Talk (http://www.google.com/talk)
Can login to multiple locations with single login? Yes.
Since day one of its introduction, Google Talk has had the ability to be logged into multiple locations with a single account. Whether it’s via web or client, it’s completely do-able.
Yahoo (http://messenger.yahoo.com)
Can login to multiple locations with single login? No.
Not possible to login to multiple locations with a single login. It doesn’t matter whether you do it from the client itself, http://webmessenger.yahoo.com, or Yahoo! Mail. When you login to one it will kick off the other every time, all the time.
Windows Live (http://messenger.live.com)
Can login to multiple locations with single login? No.
The Windows Live Messenger does not permit multiple logins with a single account, nor does the web messenger version or using an alternative multi-protocol client.
End result
AIM (and most likely ICQ) and Google Talk permit multiple logins from a single account, everything else doesn’t, so if having your IM logged into multiple locations matters, use AIM or GTalk.
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Thank you very much for this article. I was looking for a solution to doing that for yahoo messenger.
nhgh
Do update this post if you feel the need to, as WLM now supports multiple location login too.