No Not Shaq's Crap Kazaam, This is the Awesome KAZAA (KaZaA)

Member Name: Rocawear

Product:	KaZaA
Date:	14/03/03 (462 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fast , convenient, new features

Disadvantages: non i dont think

I was first introduced to downloadable music, and software necessary, as many were through the Napster website. Sadly (and if you don’t already know where the hell have you been) Napster was obliterated by lawsuits from several of the groups and artists featured on the website.

The problem with Napster??? They had all the music files on their own web page, which meant that they were breaking copyright laws, or so the suing artists believed. So what now?? Napster down and millions of songs still to be downloaded.

A friend from university firstly introduced me to Grokster, but several attempts at a download were wasted due to the fact that they had problems with their software. But by this point I was on a mission to find new software to download music.

Kazaa

I found Kazaa through accident, searching for music download software, the links appeared and Kazaa was “free”, I like free stuff!!!! So I took a gander at their homepage. Upon reading their information I found that, unlike Napster’s methods, they used a peer-to-peer network (P2P). This P2P network meant that none of the files were actually online, and they were actually peoples private collections of music, saved to their hard drives on their PC’s, and ‘made’ available to the Internet through the software. So Kazaa had worked around the reasons behind Napsters demise and are in pole position.

So I downloaded the software, which didn’t take very long – which also made me happy, and got down to playing with the program to see what it could do. (I first downloaded V1, now it is V2, so I will explain V2)

When you open the program, it automatically starts you at their web page (internet connection needed obviously) if you aren’t connected to the internet then u get the default, “the page you are……..” Down the left hand side of the program window are the different sections of the pr
ogram:

My Kazaa –
My Kazaa holds all of your downloaded and self – added tracks, arrange able by date, name, size etc. Within My Kazaa on the left hand side you have another box with folders:
All Files, Music, Software etc. A new part added to the V2 edition is the play list. Underneath the folder sub-section is the play lists area. In this area you can create play lists from the files you have added to your music files, and the files that you have downloaded into the all files folder (automatic). This option is so awesome, as the V1 edition didn’t have it. Almost all my music files have been placed into at least 1 play list, with some of them being included in more than one, i.e. Favorites, Dance, Hip Hop etc. and each of these play lists are found on the left hand side of the My Kazaa screen.

Search –
The search feature allows you to search the current, online members of Kazaa shared folders, the folders which contain the files that they are willing to share with people, and therefore are available for you to download. You can do a simple search, by simply typing in a word, and any files that contain that word will be pulled up for you in the section of the screen to the right of the search section. To narrow down your search, first click music, then choose from ALL, TITLE and ARTIST, then type the word, your choice obviously depends on what the word directly relates too. If you are still getting too many results click on ‘more search options’ a new box will appear with a variety of different search filters. When looking for songs I usually us the album filter, simply type in the name of the album you would like to view, and then go back to the original search box, and re-type the song or artist title. This is especially handy when searching for artists as some searches will return more than one artist if the name is similar, i.e. Nelly / Nelly Furtardo. Then when you find the music tracks that yo
u would like to download, simply double click them in the search results section, a little green downward pointing arrow will appear and this will tell you that that file is being downloaded. There are no limits to how many songs you can download at any one time, but after you have 3 songs simultaneously downloading, any songs after this are automatically paused, so the 1st three are faster, and automatically begin to download as each previous song is completed.

Traffic –
The traffic screen shows you which songs you are downloading, and which songs other people are uploading from you. This screen is really handy to see which files have been paused and which files are active downloads, so you can pause and activate them as you like, if you want a song completed before another one, simply pause the one that is downloading, and resume the one that is paused or queued.

New Features
Other new features include an instant messaging service to other users, for your personal pleasure!!! A participation rating is also included, although I don’t know exactly what it is for, I can make an educated guess. When I am not downloading files, and people are uploading my files, the rating rises, when I am downloading and uploading the rating falls, so my educated guess is ‘the rating serves as a guide to other users at how often people are using your files, the higher the rating, the more or more popular files you have, and more likely the faster upload speed you have’ so there it is, if anyone knows the truth please comment on my opinion so I can change my opinion to contain pure truth!!!

Summary: