IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a virtual meeting place where people from all over the world can meet and talk; you'll find the whole diversity of human interests, ideas, and issues here, and you'll be able to participate in group discussions on one of the many thousands of IRC channels, on hundreds of IRC networks, or just talk in private to family or friends, wherever they are in the world.
To use IRC you need a small application like mIRC, an IRC client for Windows that was written by Khaled Mardam-Bey. mIRC is a friendly IRC client that is well equipped with options and tools.
There is no restriction to the number of people that can participate in a given discussion, or the number of channels that can be formed on IRC. As a user you run a "client" program like mIRC which connects to a "server" in an IRC network. All servers are interconnected and pass messages from user to user over the IRC network. One server can be connected to several other servers and up to hundreds of clients.
Limitations:
· 30-day trial
· Nag screen
What's New in This Release:
· The Alt/AltGr keys should now work correctly for users with different keyboard layouts.
· The "Minimize to tray" option now defaults to off under Windows 7 due to the way Windows 7 hides all tray icons by default.
· The Channel Central dialog has been changed so that it can now be resized.
· The /list command issue with min/max values not working on some networks has been fixed.
· Added "Use compatibility mode" option to SSL dialog, which defaults to on. If turned off, OpenSSL will use the "empty fragment" feature which may make your connection more secure at the expense of less compatibility with some SSL servers.
· The /dns command issue with results not being shown when a non-existent nickname is specified has been fixed.
· The tray icon issue with mouse clicks not working in some situations has been fixed
· The /timer -h recursion issue should now be resolved.
· Other changes and bug fixes.