When I first discovered the Internet, I was a windoze user, and so when I discovered IRC, mIRC was it. So I grew up on mIRC, and never quite managed to adapt to command-line IRC clients like ircII. Well, I could single-task in them fine, but that wasn't how I was used to using IRC.
Whenever I was on a machine with a GUI, I'd generally use XChat, and didn't feel too much like a fish out of water. Problem is, I rarely use a GUI. I usually SSH into the box that is my gateway, reattach screen, in which I have a screen for Mutt, a screen for micq, and a screen for bashing away at a shell prompt.
So the net result of all this is I don't IRC much any more. People who know me know that I tend to flit in and out, depending on if I'm after someone, or some information. I wouldn't mind changing that, and having an idle IRC session in another screen, but till now, I haven't found the IRC client to make it worth my while.
Today, I discovered irssi, and it might just be that IRC client. At least for a start, it didn't bugger up my terminal, the way ircII invariably seems to. The main issue I have is I feel totally uncoordinated in it at the moment. I can split the screen into windows, which is half the battle, I'd like to be able follow a couple of channels at once. It's totally bizarre trying to get my head around what happens when you split the screen, join a channel and then part. It seems to close the "window" resulting in your splits going to hell. The other issue is colours. I haven't mastered how to customise that yet, and the doco is, well, light on in places. So if you run into me on IRC in the next little while, please be patient, while I figure out how the heck to drive my IRC client.