Sometimes there is a tendancy for engineers to try to avoid circuits because they "have too many transistors". There is also sometimes the idea that adding more discrete components such as resistors and capacitors is the way to work around design issues. I am making this posting in order to point out that a dual transistor relay driver circuit can be very simple and very small. Such solution, as you have heard before readily solves the power-on click problem.

For example...I recently implemented this component into a PC board design:



This transistor pair can handle 1 ampere of continuous collector current so it is suitable to numerous relay driver applications. I show below a schematic snippett that implements this dual NPN/PNP pair:



Below you can see a graphic of these components placed on a circuit board. The dual transistor is a SOT23-6 package and the resistors are shown as 0603 size. You can judge the small size of the circuit foot print by comparing it to the DB9 connector or to the 0.250 inch diameter mounting hole pad in the corner.



BTW....Zetex makes a rather nice selection of dual bipolar transistor and mosfet devices
Michael Karas