I think mIRC should check, even though nobody is on the internal list. The reason for this is that one day some crazy IRC server might implement a feature where it stores a notify list on the server for a registered nick.
However, up on connecting to efnet.demon.co.uk I don't get the message "* No one in your notify list is on IRC". On dalnet I do get the message. So servers have some part to play in this too.
