mIRC hasn't been going downhill just because there are ads in it now for those who haven't purchased.
Since you're getting those ads I imagine you never paid for a license. Khaled decided that instead of people leeching the program without paying for it, he would put in ads to offset the cost of people who should, but don't register (aka people like you). Seems like a perfectly fair thing to do to me-- the ads only appear after the 30 day free-to-try shareware license has expired. Khaled could have made mIRC unusable past the 30 days, but he chose to allow people to continue to use it with a nag screen. You should be happy you're seeing ads and not an unusable app.
