The Goodies & The Baddies (KaZaA)

Member Name: oguru

Product:	KaZaA
Date:	18/06/02 (273 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free music, Loads of results from searches, Very easy to use

Disadvantages: Spyware & Adware, Soon to close??

Kazaa is full of goodies, but beware there's baddies too! Saying that I'd be lost without it.

Kazaa is a peer 2 peer file sharing network where you can download/share music, movies, documents, images and software. Kazaa boasts around 2 million users with 1,450,175 users online at present (15/6/02, 16.40 GMT).

The Goodies

Where do I start? There's loads of good points:-
Download, Installation and Use: all very easy
The software can be downloaded from www.kazaalite.com (recommended) or kazaa.com. I recommend using Kazaa Lite as this version of the software doesn't contain Baddies (see later in op) and works just the same. It took me just over 1 min to download with a broadband connection (a friend reported about 3 mins over 56k dial-up connection). Once downloaded you are asked if you want to open the folder. Do this and double click on the icon (will be called KMD1 or something similar - kazaa media desktop). Installation was very easy and straightforward and was complete in less than a minute.
The first time you use Kazaa you are asked to give a username. You are given a box in which to enter this and the instructions are easy to follow. Once this is complete you're away.

Searching: easy to use and good results.
To start a search click on the search button on the toolbar and you'll be taken to the search screen. There's a box to enter your text and various options to refine your such. You can search for the following relating to the text you enter: everything (default), audio, video, images, documents, software. I usually stick to the default of "everything" as this will give you the widest results possible.
Example search - text entered: sclub7
Search took around 30 secs to complete and found 182 files (of which 14 were videos, 8 images and the rest audio).

Downloading: easy to do and pretty quick
To download a file just double click on it from the file
list (from search). A small green arrow will appear at the left to confirm it has been selected. The file will be placed on your download list which you can view from the traffic screen. I have found downloads to be pretty quick (I am using a broadband connection which helps) although this can obviously depend on other people's connection speeds too. I can download MP3's in about 5 mins or less, images and documents around 2 mins or less and movies in around 3 hours or less. Kazaa has a good feature in that it will download the same file from several users at once where possible therefore reducing the overall download time. For optimum results you can restrict your uploads and downloads to 1 or 2 at a time. This is done by going to the Tools menu, select options then select the traffic tab. Here you also have the option to disable file sharing if you want to. Bear in mind though that the whole point of Kazaa is to share, some users are offended if you don't share and will cancel your download.



Traffic: useful information screen
If you click on the traffic button on the toolbar you'll be taken to the screen which allows you to monitor all your downloads and uploads.
It shows information such as title, artist, file type (video, mp3 etc), download speed, time remaining, filename etc.

Messaging: easy to use, nice extra.
By highlighting a user from your traffic screen you can click on the message button on the toolbar to send a message. You are presented with a box to type your message in and then you just click send. Although I don't use this feature much it's nice to have.

The Baddies

Spyware and Adware. These attach themselves to your computer and provide you with many annoying ads on your desktop and allow others such as marketing groups to trace your surfing habits etc. These can be avoided by installing Kazaa Lite (www.kazaalite.com) which works and looks exactly the same but without
adware and spyware.

Unscrupulous Users
I suppose we get these anywhere don't we? Just a word of warning though. Check your files (especially videos) to see just what they are before showing to the kids!! I know you probably all do this anyway (I do) but I downloaded what I thought was Monsters Inc (file was titled Monsters Inc, Artist - Pixar, keywords - children monsters family etc) but it turned out to be a porn film!! There is a filter built in (tools, options, filter tab) but it didn't work on that occasion!!
Files can be wrongly named - after my Monsters Inc incident the next attempts to get Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings gave me two copies of Monsters Inc!! Despite these few hiccups however I usually get what I've requested.
If you do use Kazaa, be a good user and make sure your files are correctly named.

Overall, I don't know where I'd be without Kazaa. My music collection has expanded beyond belief and I've found some great films too.
Kazaa is very easy to use right from downloading and installation and I would recommend it to anyone.

Summary: