Many clients are starting to support the imoticon thing, and those who don't want to see them can disable the interpretting and display of them. A little something for everyone.
I know Trillian, a do-it-all instant message/irc client does it, lots of java apps, etc. I figure mIRC will one day support it too, and I'm sure it will feature a config item to disable the display of them as graphics too =)
WnP
