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MULTIPLE INSTANT MESSENGER SERVICES

Brian Grainger

brian@grainger1.freeserve.co.uk

Leslie Carmel wrote to say:

Unfortunately, I have Windows XP.
<Ed: I know the feeling!>

Right now I can't do anything about it, but, what I'd like to ask you is this. First of all, I have AOL Instant Messenger and I want to know if I can use more than one Instant Messenger service at a time on my home computer? Second, I want to know if I would be required to pay for that extra messenger service, or maybe for both services?

I must admit that I did not know the answer to this question, although I guessed it would be possible to have multiple Instant Messenger services.

I did some googling and confirmed this to be the case. I think it is simply a matter of signing in to the appropriate services. I personally subscribe to only one service, so I cannot really confirm this. Also, AOL tend to have special procedures for everything so they may be different.

As far as I am aware, provided you use free Instant Messenger Services there would be no charge for signing in to more than one. Having to go through the process of signing in to each one would be a bit of a pain. For this reason some tools are available to sign in to more than one at once. The most prevalent in the links that I found was:

IM2 - Instant Messenger 2

It is a free download, (1MB), and can be found at:

http://www.gold-software.com/download8384.html as well as other places.

This is not a recommendation, just an indication that such products exist.

The major networks, AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo have, in the past, tried to change their systems so that products such as IM2 cannot access their systems. If IM2 works now, there is no guarantee that it will work in the future.

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