I know this has been asked before, but I really think there should be an option to disable the tray at startup.

I hardly ever download questionable files, so rarely need to use ClamWin, alongside my other anti-malware software. Currently I have it disabled at startup, when I need to scan I open it, and then I update and scan. But thats rare, which is why I think there should be a built-in option.

In addition, is there a general discussion area, a kind of community chat?

You can join the #clamwin IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

this is not going to be made, future clamwin versions will "host" the scanning engine inside the tray application