I need to be online in IRC channels for my work nature.

I started using pidgin(then gaim) to chat in IRC channels, I was quite happy with pidgin. Its not only IRC client, also Instant Messaging client. So you can add yahoo, msn, google, aim accounts also. You can group the chat windows based on the accounts, etc. It provides nice features. But it lacks one feature that other IRC clients provide, you can’t minimize the entire chat windows to system tray. From F8 recent update, pidgin often crashes for no reasons. So I am forced to find another alternate.

I tried Konversation, it’s also nice. It provides a way to minimize all your chat windows to system tray. But you can not create separate windows based on your server accounts. I was looking for this feature, but without this I need to have some 10 channels in a single window, I found this to be inconvenient.

Then I tried Xchat, it seems to give most of the functionalities I require. It does automatic nick name identification for our local irc server (but pidgin fails to do this). But it still does not give the group the windows based on account. I am still not convinced with the looks of Xchat. But I think I need to get used with this.