When comparing Nettalk vs The Lounge, the Slant community recommends Nettalk for most people. In the question“What are the best IRC clients for Windows?” Nettalk is ranked 14th while The Lounge is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Nettalk is:
Nettalk can be set up to overlay incoming messages. Especially useful for games.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Can overlay incoming messages
Nettalk can be set up to overlay incoming messages. Especially useful for games.
Pro Built-in spellcheck
Pro Free and open source
Pro Multi-lingual interface
Nettalk is available in English, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, Hungarian and German.
Pro Easy interface
Simple and good looking interface.
Pro Encryption support
Pro Scriptable
Pro Functionality can be extended via plugins
Pro Free
Pro Highly maintained
You can see the activity here. For example 62 pull requests were merged from 2018-02-17 to 2018-02-24.
Pro Hosted on the web
Always up.
Cons
Con No longer developed
Development ceased some time ago (2012).
Con Poor log management
It stores all logs in one file in a custom format.
Con German language
Is primarily a German language client, so the spell check, etc. is in German.
Con Server, not an application
This is a server, not an application, so there's that extra bit of overhead.
Con Uses NodeJS
Javascript...