I think you're wrong, the chat is very usefull in ed2k. For example, if you want to dowload a file with few sources you want to ask the uploader for a slot, or give him an advice that he's the one who is sharing the file. As you don't know the uploader of the file, the aMule chat is the only way to contact him.
I've tested aMule 2.2.2-2 in Windows Vista 32 bits, and I've could chat with eMule users without problem. However I can't do it with aMule 2.2.2 in Ubuntu 8.10 (amd64). I try to chat WITH THE SAME USERS and I recieve an aMule message advertising me that the user I want to chat require that I solve a captcha, and that as I haven't captchas enabled I can't chat with him. A few seconds after, aMule closes without any error message.
I can't understand why the aMule chat worked for me in Windows, and didn't work in linux. Maybe it's the different architecture 32-64 bits of my operating systems, or maybe it worked in Windows because I also have installed eMule 0.49b.
Could you please fix the chat captcha problem in future versions? Thanks.
PD: Sorry for my bad English, I'm Spanish.