ctrl+tabbing through windows never worked for me, pressing escape doesn't close the window, it constantly gets moved to the second screen, is rather slowish, etc

Hrm:

• By "never worked for me", do you mean that hitting ctrl-tab doesn't do anything, or doesn't do what you expect?
• Regarding pressing escape to close the window: http://d.pidgin.im/wiki/Using%20Pidgin#HowdoImakeE scapecloseconversationwindows
• Regarding the second screen stuff, perhaps file a bug if it's reproducible?
• Slowish, can't help you there. :-)