helps you bear being without Napster (Bearshare)

Member Name: MHWake

Product:	Bearshare
Date:	02/07/01 (136 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good gnutella front end, makes it easy to share files, Fair replacement for Napster with some extra features.

Disadvantages: High proportion of transfers fail to connect at all, Obscene searches mean I'd think twice before letting kids use it without help

If you're suffering from the loss of Napster, Bearshare is a fair substitute. It uses peer to peer sharing (Unlike with Napster, you don't connect to a central computer that holds all the files. Everyone on the network is a server.) Basically, it's a program that makes it easy for you to use gnutella.

Log on to Bearshare.com, download the software and install it. It all worked well but I'm not a PC newbie and I still found the process a little unnerving. The ugly interface takes some getting used to. (What a choice of colours!) Give yourself some time to get used to it. You'll find excellent help is available.

The first program window shows you the progress of your connections - what servers you are connected to, the bandwidth used, and so on. Most of this information is not much use but you can see the IP addresses of the servers and connect direct to any you choose, so you can go straight to a particular computer.

Enter a search in the next window and let the program search through everyone who's connected to find the files you want. It's good at giving usable results from odd words. For each file found, the quality of service ("QOS")is identified by the use of colour and a measuring bar. You can click on the results to sort, which (in theory) lets you pick only the sources with the best QOS.
Other windows show you what you are down- and uploading, and a really interesting window gives you constantly updated stats.

It lets you do lots of things that Napster doesn't - like swap any file types if you set the appropriate permissions. However, it would be pretty foolish to let the whole membership loose on your .exe files, so make sure you confine the areas of your disks and the file types you'll share to protect your PC against random ill-will.

Bearshare is one of the most popular Napster alternatives. The size of its user base has got to be the first plus factor. You may
need a user database with millions of files to have a fair chance of finding what you want. (I managed to locate a file by a pretty obscure artist that I heard once many years ago.)

Other things I like - you get to choose the actual source of a file and which file version; it's fast and efficient at managing downloads and uploads and lets you know what's going on, you can go straight to people's webites or make a direct connection to a chosen IP, you can see how many people have been looking for files you have. People who take part in gnutella tend to be in favour of creating a file-sharing community, so may be very willing to oblige you. Loads more...

I really like it. I would recommend it to anyone. However, there are a lot of things I don't like. Don't let me put you off. It's definitely Very Useful but -

* there is a really irritating panel on the downloads page that tracks current searches from all users. This flashes past so there's no chance you can respond to any of them. Worse, 8 out of 10 of these are obscene. And I mean really REALLY obscene - not just "porn" or "sex" or whatever - leaving you with a really disturbed idea of what sort of people are using it. (I really hope a lot of it is adolescents typing in phrases just to shock people.)
* it's often really difficult to actually get anything, no matter how picky you are about QOS. If you need a "push" from the file holder, you might as well forget it. I make a list of downloads and leave it to run. It has taken actual DAYS before a connection is made. (Bearshare nobly keeps trying to make the connection.)
* if you are security conscious - everybody can see your IP. It is well possible to download a trojan (which could then start making free with your personal details)

I liked the way Napster let people write instant notes. Sometimes it was irritating of course, but I shared a few online friendsh
ips, as a result of people writing notes to me via Napster. Bearshare does try to create a community but there's a lot of difference between a "community" created to order and one that grows naturally out of people's interaction.

Altogether - it's not as good as Napster in some ways, bettter in others. This suggests it averages out about the same. Well worth getting.

Summary: