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Add to SafariWhen comparing mIRC vs Pidgin, the Slant community recommends Pidgin for most people. In the question“What are the best IRC clients for Windows?” Pidgin is ranked 4th while mIRC is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose Pidgin is:
Pidgin not only supports IRC, it also supports plenty of other services such as AIM, Google Talk, MSN, ICQ and plenty of others. This way, you can have all of your conversations in the same app and won't have to deal with multiple chat windows being open.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Clean interface
mIRC interface is uncluttered, easy to overview and use. Additionally, it is highly customizable where fonts, layouts, aliases, popups, etc can be changed and extendable so it can be made to fit any necessities.
Pro Highly scriptable with an ever-evolving scripting language
Scripts are short programs (sets of instructions) that can be used to automate tasks in mIRC. mIRC has its own scripting language which can be used to perform many different types of tasks, from managing IRC channels to playing multi-user online games.
mIRC scripts can also be used to perform tasks that are not IRC-related, such as managing files on the computer, sending emails, or backing up a web server.
The scripting language is being improved upon and developed further with each release of mIRC.
Pro Functionality can be extended with a vast array of scripts
A vast array of scripts are available on the web.
Pro Almost all actions can be performed via buttons
mIRC offers easy to use graphical solutions for a wide range of different IRC commands and server configurations so it's possible to use either commands or icons based on preference.
Pro Has been in active development for over 20 years
mIRC was created in 1995 by Khaled Mardam-Bey and is still being actively developed.
Pro Free trial
mIRC offers a free 30-day trial.
Pro Stable
Pro Per-server settings
It's possible to create a list of settings and action that perform when connecting to a specific server. All of these things are easy to set up and use.
Pro Very customisible
Pro Crackable if you NOP CRC
Very easy to crack if you know basic Reverse Engineering.
Pro Support for a wide range of additional chat services
Pidgin not only supports IRC, it also supports plenty of other services such as AIM, Google Talk, MSN, ICQ and plenty of others. This way, you can have all of your conversations in the same app and won't have to deal with multiple chat windows being open.
Pro Free and open source
Pidgin and its code is completely free and open source. Pidgin has no ads and no features behind a paywall.
Pro Cross platform
The Pidgin instant messaging client is cross platform, working on Linux, Windows and OSX.
Pro Convenient notification features
Like other quality IRC clients, Pidgin features notifications that the user can set in order to have a variety of things happen when the users is mentioned, such as an audio cue or changing the system tray icon.
Pro Highly customisable with plugins
Pidgin not only has a large plugin library built-in, but also an array of third party plugins for a variety of functions.
Cons
Con Not free
mIRC is not free but only a trial for 30 days, after that the user is asked to pay $20 to be able to use the software.
Con No command line solution
Con The developer sucks
You cannot get real support, it's everything 90's style there, a forum that created since 1990 and nothing interesting, also when you request something it gets deleted by the developer or you got ban because the developer doesn't agree with your opinion.
Con Vague information on validity of purchased licenses
Developer only says a license is valid for "several years" and is known to have intentionally voided licenses that were specifically described as lifetime licenses for repeat business.
Con Old bones
It doesn't help when a program has old bones.
Con Developer is acting like Hitler uppon feedbacks and replies
By westor
Con Miserable IRC font controls (as of 2.13.0.17)
Does its best to avoid putting sensible default font controls in any place where you can get to it. And when it does grudgingly change it, based on system preferences (not local preferences), it does so in an inconsistent and unpredictable fashion.
Con No native VoIP support
While there are plugins there is no built in support for VoIP in Pidgin which is time consuming to implement instead of being baked in from the jump.
