You could hack the ChatMX to do that, its just updating some MySQL tables. I think that you need to take the existing whos online code, tweak it a bit and place it into the ChatMX script.
How about Apple, much bad ethics? A old teacher of mine refuses to use Apple Products beacuse Apple stole the idea of Xerox. And look, Bill Gates / Melinda Gates foundation donates a ton of money to charities. I dont see Mr. Steve Jobs doing that.
I dont think you need to reinstall it. It can be relatively easily made to use less queries.
I dont exactly have the time to help you do that, but I'm sure someone here at the forums can help you if you give them admin and they can go in and check your cache settings.
Yeah, there is permissioning. In the system module, under the Admin Pages Click on Groups Those are the permissions and what modules each group can access.