Out on the Wire (Limewire)

Member Name: KMello

Product:	Limewire
Date:	22/08/07 (383 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fairly fast and very simple to use

Disadvantages: Used illegally and sometimes songs don't download.

LimeWire.com is one of the biggest file sharing softwares available on the net. It allows users to download songs, videos and other files with a click of the mouse. Is there a new song out that you have been dying to hear a thousand times over? Want to look for Paris Hilton's latest rendezvous? It's all there on the wire.

The company was founded in August of 2000, basing itself out of New York. The purpose of the company is to develop technologies to profit from the formation of worldwide peer-to-peer networks across the internet. Within the first year, over 3,000,000 downloads of the software has been made. So what makes this site so much better than Bearshare and other such companies?

Well first of all, the basic version is free. LimeWirepro, however, does cost money, but the company says that the pro package allows for faster downloads and better search results. Next, LimeWire boasts a number of guarantees, such as:

-No bundled software of any kind
-Firewall to Firewall Transfers
-Faster network connections
-Universal Plug 'N Play
-iTunes Integration
-Creative Commons Integration
-"What's New?" feature
-Search drill down results
-Proxy support
-Support for International searches and International groups

I have LimeWire downloaded on my computer, and here is my experience with it:

Reliability: 90% of the time, it works just fine. However, from time to time it seems to get stuck. Either I can't search properly or the songs I download never finish. This is easy enough to get around though, by just downloading it from another source.

Ease of use: It's simple. Once you take a look at the general layout, you can easily find what you are looking for, whether it be music, movies, audio, etc. Just click the category you want, type in what you are looking for, and a bunch of titles pop up. You then just click the correct file and wait for it to download.

Installation: Like most software, the installation speed depends on how much your computer can handle. With mine, it took no more than five minutes. With a 1993 Packard Bell, however, you might run into a few major issues.

Noise: There is no noise on the site that I have come across yet. It is a no-nonsense sort of site where you just take what you want and leave without the hassle of waiting for the pages to load.

Speed: As I just mentioned, there are no frills on the site. No fancy animated graphics or music playing in the background. Therefore, if you have a computer that can hack it, you should have no problem going from page to page. With the actual song downloading, it depends on how busy the server is and (again) your computer's capabilities. Sometimes songs take no more than three minutes, while others never seem to fully download.

Variety of features: There really isn't much to say here. It's a fairly simplistic site. I do, however, appreciate the tabs when searching for multiple files at the same time.

All you have to do to enjoy LimeWire is to download it, run it, and then search for whatever your heart desires, either by the artist's name, the title, genre, or other key word searches. Additionally, users can chat with one another. It is windows and Mac compatible, so if you are down with pirating, not that I'm condoning it, go for it.

Summary: LimeWire.com is one of the biggest file sharing softwares available on the net and easy to use.

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