Given the "font of all knowledge" status of this group, it seemed the best place to ask this question.....
What is the best (meaning best and free) IRC program?

I can't believe I have lasted this long without irc but hey ....

You don't mention if you want it for Win32, OS X, or Linux.

Personally, I'm partial to X-Chat (at least for Win32). It is simple, and no goofy buttons unless you want to see them.

For linux, I like CToolz or Scrollz, but that was umpteen years ago. No clue what the best out there is for that platform.

- Tim

I have both linux and windows workstations, so as long as its not mac I'll be fine

IME, XChat's the best GUI IRC client on all platforms. I use irssi, though, as a text-mode client.

It's certainly not the best, but if you want an all-in-one solution, Trillian does IRC along with AIM, yahoo, MSN, and ICQ. I use it simply because I don't feel like running a ton of chat clients.

Be warned though, the Trillian 3 chat client lacks some features you might want. A big one for me was lack of a /ignore command. The Trillian 3 IRC client was restarted from scratch, and the developers did not see it as a high priority to restore every feature the old IRC plugin had.

Of course if you're just using it to connect to #empeg, you probably won't need ignore.

Heh, I thought /ignore was a mandatory feature in #empeg :-)

I personally didn't need it though to ignore an annoyning user. Instead at work, I wanted it to ignore a certain bot that announces cases to the room. I have no need to monitor them, so it's just extra text filling the screen.

Anyhow, I do also recommend XChat or Trillian on a Windows box. There are still free versions of XChat for Windows out there, just search around on Google to find them.

Thanks guys, I'll give them both a try

I'm amazed nobody has mentioned mirc - by far the best client (for Windows).

Rob

I have always used Mirc. Love it