LordCinnamon: Which irc client do you guys recommend?
mIRC pretty much just works, also you can really easily carry around the necessary files on a flash drive or whatever.
My favourite client used to be
KVirc, because it kept separate windows for system messages (network & joins/parts) and for actual conversation, which makes it really easy to see if anyone has actually said anything lately. It used to be way slow on Windows, but I haven't checked it out lately.
Cheers to Miaghstir for pointing out Opera chat. I've been using Opera for years and didn't even know.