I've run both as well and Pidgin definately has more options and customisation to it but for overall ease of use RTCOMM wins hands down. I too would always forgot to start Pidgin on a start-up or reboot, and ocassionaly it would just die/quit.

I do wish we could send/receive files on RTCOMM via IM, I understand that aMSN has this option but seems abit beta/buggy still.