Well I've brought back Wine Chat.  It's has a nice "AJAX" engine... so not long screen refreshes.  New chat messages just pop up... very quickly actually.

 

It's very simple, but very fast, and quite usable.  You can find it under the "Wine Forums" tab, or on the top left side of the Wine Forums page I've put a link to it.   You can see who's in chat by looking at the "Where Are They"  module.

 

Enjoy!