mIRC is the most popular and feature-rich IRC client available. It is easy to use, and has built-in security features to prevent your computer from becoming the latest cyber victim.

IRC, or internet relay chat, is a common and widely used service on the Internet besides email and web browsing. Many people happily use IRC mainly for chat purposes. However, some use it as a tool to download filez and the like. IRC can be thought of as the Times Square of the Internet (I'm talking about the 1970's NYC's TS, not the sanitized and emasculated late 90's Disney version of it) There are many people here, some you may recognize through chatting, but everyone else you don't know except for knowing their origin (ip address).

mIRC was developed by Khaled Mardam-Bey from the UK. It is free to download and use. The most current version as of this writing is 5.82. It is suggested that you download your copy from any number of authorized download sites as a safety precaution against any backdoors or virii.

mIRC's strong point is its powerful, yet easy scripting language. You can program your client to do any number of tasks, or you can download a script from one of many third party developers that may do the same thing.

Your client can be used as a bot, which is a script that automates any number of tasks you assign based on interaction by other users. Be warned, however, that some bots are not tolerated on the many chat servers. If you are discovered, many servers can k-line you, which basically means you are blacklisted. The same goes for fserves. Fserves are file servers on IRC that other users can connect to and transfer files. Popular ones include SDFind and Spr Jukebox.

The downside to IRC transfer of files is that it is sometimes slow, and disconnects can be frequent. If given the choice, use an FTP site instead of an IRC fserve when transferring files.

An alternative is to IRC file transfer is DCC which is a one-on-one transfer of files. You have to be careful though, many viruses spread this way to unsuspecting victims because people either enable the DCC to accept all files, or just click away on the yes button without actually reading what is being proposed on screen.

Most of the time on IRC, you may find that some users are trying to send you files with wierd attachments. If accepted and opened, it will wreak havok on your computer. mIRC, by default, happily disables acceptance of most computer files with the exception of gif,jpg, and txt

When you want to add colors to your chat, you can press ctrl-k and a color dialog box will pop up. You can click on a color you like or disable the box altogether.

The interface of mIRC is simple. The main channel window is open with the list of people in the channel listed to your right. If you can't decide on a channel, you can query the server for a list. Basically in mIRC, you can click on a button to do that. Then you can filter the list down to what interests you. You can have several channels and windows in mIRC open at once. Any new chat being said in the channel will appear in red in the channel tab bar.

Configuring mIRC was easy. The help files are useful, but I don't think anything radically different has changed several dozen versions ago. The options are laid out easily on the tool bar.

Perhaps best of all features of mIRC is that despite all the options and flexibility, it is easy to use. There are no nag screens, except that your webpage may now and again point to the mirc website asking you to register.





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