Which Instant Messenger?
I'm curious, what program(s) do you use for instant messaging?
Pidgin
I used to be a die-hard fan of Gaim, until it switched names and became Pidgin.. then I became a die-hard fan of Pidgin. 🙂 Why? It's open source, free, and it'll run on linux and windows.
Back when I dual-booted between linux and XP on my desktop, I was able to share the data files between the windows and linux copies of gaim. It was very nice, all settings, chat histories, etc were consistent no matter which OS I was currently using.
Gmail
I'm currently taking advantage of the chat feature within Gmail. This is about as bare-bones of a client as you can get, so there aren't any features like file transfers (yet), but, as far as I'm concerned, the convenience more than makes up for that.
Since Gmail allows me to chat through AIM, and since most of the people I talk to are either using Gmail or AIM, I no longer need to have Pidgin or any other chat program installed on my work or home computer. I'll get the same familiar setup on just about any computer. Plus, being able to search through all of my chat logs quickly and easily makes finding forgotten info as painless as possible.
But that's me… what do you use?