That's the same thing I was thinking of why it's loosing people, if any. It's too complicated, but I disagree that it's because it does more. It actually does less and makes it harder to do.
No pretty pictures, no video, no audio, no mobile devices,
You can do all of that through scripts and DLLs. I stated that you could do more with mIRC than with IM and that is true... because of the ability to script. Can you play games and automated trivia on IM? I've yet to see IM darts or UNO or Scattergories. And that's just games. Because of scripting, mIRC can do a lot more than any IM program.
almost no one can send files because they're behind a router or firewall,
That isn't true. They just don't know how. You can use passive DCC to send things regardless if you have a router or firewall that cannot be configured as long as the person you are sending to doesn't have the port(s) blocked. In IRC, you can use basically any port. In IM, you are often limited to only one port, which means that one port may be blocked if you are at a university or business. In the end, sending with mIRC is more adaptable, but is more difficult to learn to do if you don't know what you are doing. Of course, mIRC is meant for chatting rather than sending stuff anyhow.
if you want to talk to your friends you have to make sure you meet on the same server and channel--you can't just message them directly,
Most people who use IRC stick to a specific set of channels, so this point is rather moot. Any of your friends who are on IRC are likely going to be in channels that you're in, so you *can* just click their nicks and send them messages if they are connected.
nick changes make the notify list useless and block private messages from going through, half the users don't even see your away messages,
These types of things could be suggested for changing and could possibly be improved. They don't in any way show that IM is better.
it doesn't notify you when someone sends you a message unless you're actually looking.
Huh? Sure it will. Just add a sound if you don't like the visual method.
Yes, I know you can configure it to do all these things, but if you look at it from the perspective of a new user, no one in their right mind would choose to go through all that hassle to chat with their friends if they had the option.
As I stated, it is more complex. So why go through all of that? It is more complex because of the wide variety of things you can do with it. Could it be simplified in certain areas? Probably. Should it be made to be like IM clients? No.
The problem isn't mIRC or IRC. That's not really why people don't use it as much. People don't want to take the time and effort to learn something new. If they can do something without ever having to think about it, most prefer that. For those people, IRC is just never going to be right. For those who are willing to put in a little effort, mIRC is *very* easy to learn. I had 4th graders using it without effort in under 15 minutes of explanation. Granted, they weren't writing scripts and sending files and changing a lot of settings, but they could easily use it for chatting. I could have had them doing anything besides writing scripts in 1-2 hours without any difficulty at all. mIRC's not that hard to learn, but it does require putting in the effort to do so.
