It shouldn't even have support for them. Otherwise everyone's going to move to another client
I wouldn't change to another programme if mIRC started to support smileys. What I 'might' do is turn the feature off at times. I do note that smileys do not lag any other programme that supports them so I fail to see why mIRC would be disadvantaged. At any rate computers are so powerful now that any difference would be very hard to spot.
Your whole assertion about people's preferences is completely wrong.
