Something that I've noticed a lot of people having trouble with or just not knowing about is that you don't need to have Pidgin installed on your tablet to use AIM/MSN and other IM services. You can have all of that on your tablet by using the Jabber/Google Talk client.

What are the advantages of using Jabber for your IM needs?

* Lower memory requirements.
* Integration into tablet address book.
* Integration with tablet's notification system.
* No need to have Pidgin and all its packages installed.
* No need to remember to start up Pidgin - tablet will connect you as you come online for you.
* One less thing in the task list.
* ...other things I'm probably forgetting at the moment.

To do this, you'll need to find a Jabber server that supports the IM services you need. There are thousands of Jabber servers out there, all with various services and in various states of stability.

This was a personal annoyance, so Texrat and I set up a Jabber server specifically for the tablet community to use. No need to guess where to go to find IM services you'll need (almost all are supported) and we're pretty solid and stable.

The service is called Jablet and it is 100% free for all to use.

Those of you who are interested in getting an account can find a tutorial here for getting an account and setting it up on your tablet.

Once you've got an account, you'll need to set up the IM transports/gateways. This is generally easy if you use the PSI Jabber client on your PC. You can use the Service Discovery menu item in the PSI menu.

Those of you that are having difficulty with doing that or don't understand it at all can send me an IM here on ITT, on the Jablet forums, or send me an IM over Jabber at jay@jablet.org. I'll set up your IM accounts for you manually.

Let me know what you think, or if you need help setting it up and I'll be happy to do it for you.

(In the near future, we will have an automated sign up that will create your accounts and add all your IM accounts automatically to the tablet.)

You can then use the Address book on your tablet to consolidate your contacts if some of the people you know use several IM services. Open your address book/contacts and open the application menu. Choose Tools -> Merge contacts. You'll then be able to choose which users to consolidate together as a single contact.

Once you've done that, when you choose to start a chat with that person, you'll then be asked which service you want to use to talk to that person.

It feels like a much easier solution to me and much more integrated into the tablet's functions. I hope you like it as much as I do.

We've also got more tablet services coming in the future through Jablet. Take a look at the Jablet news site and the forums to get an idea of what we're working on.

Have fun and I hope you enjoy the server as much as I do.

Jablet signup tutorial: http://www.jablet.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9
Jabber server address: jablet.org
Jablet homepage: http://www.jablet.net/
Jablet forums: http://www.jablet.net/forum/

EDIT: I forgot to mention one thing. Some people have told me they stay away from Jabber servers because they have to readd all their contacts. This is because the server you used was really old and just didn't handle that. No such problems happen on Jablet. All your AIM/MSN/Yahoo/etc contacts are pulled down to your tablet without having to manually readd each of them.