Napster Mark 2 (WinMX)

Member Name: hugon

Product:	WinMX
Date:	01/06/01 (3616 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Ability to share mp3s Napster blocked, Easy to set up and use, fast, Ability to share all types of files

Disadvantages: Risk of viruses from some files, Choice isn't up to Napster levels for some files yet

The search for a replacement for Napster continues. Up until recently I had been using Bearshare and Gnotella, the Gnutella clients. Effective as they where, they weren’t as effective as Napster, for a number of reasons – mainly because it was difficult to see what the bitrate and length of the song was, therefore it was difficult to guess if the file was the complete version or not, and I downloaded quite a few songs with the endings chopped off (not terrible, but missing out the last few seconds can be really irritating to an obsessive like myself).

After a brief romance with Audiogalaxy (the actual client works fine, but the searching for a song on the site is so slow), I think we can come up with the conclusive successor to Napster – WinMX.

After a small 1.6MB download, and an equally brief and simple installation, you are greeted with a similar Napster-type interface, where you select a username and password (I don’t know what mine is – the program remembers it for you, and if you forget, its just a case of getting yourself a new one). Like Napster, you are prompted for the folder in which you to save your files in, and which folders (if any) you want to share. It isn’t compulsory to share files, but this is file sharing, so come on folks. These can all be changed when the program is up and running, so if you make a mistake, it’s easily rectified later.

When starting the program from scratch, it boots up noticeable faster than Napster, and also connects to the server a lot faster. The first time you run the program, it will download a series of servers to connect to, and this only takes a few seconds. WinMX can connect to multiple servers in theory, but usually only one or two are needed. The main server it connects to in the WinMX Peer Networking Protocol – this is a decentralised server that in theory cannot be shut down, as it is in a different place each time you connect to it. This
is a high capacity server and can accommodate many thousands of users online at once. It also connects to the central Napster server, and has the ability to connect to the OpenNap servers (the same ones you’ll see on Napigator), but these are low volume servers, and you’ll probably find these to be constantly full. The servers are accessible by a tab in the top bar of the program, it automatically connects to the WinMX server when you load the program, connecting to the rest of the servers is optional. I connect to the Napster server as well, but attempting the OpenNap ones tends to be pretty fruitless.

The search screen will be pretty familiar to anyone who has used Napster (that’ll be a lot of you then!). Enter the band and song, and click search, and it will return any results it finds, as well as the file size of the song, length of song, bitrate of song, and speed of connection the other user has. If you are connected to the Napster server you’ll notice that anything that is blocked using the Napster client is also blocked using WinMX. However, the WinMX server seems to be pretty good – there are a lot more users connected than I thought I would find. In fact, I was able to find a lot more obscure stuff using WinMX than I’d ever been able to find on Napster.

Being able to see the bitrate and length of songs is also a godsend. It makes it easy to see if you are downloading the complete version of if it’s missing a few seconds. It also makes it much easier to see what speed the other user is using, as with Napster, I tend to download off a fast a connection as I can, as it makes my download faster. Clicking on the tab at the top of the connection column will sort the results in order of connection speed.

WinMX has two distinct advantages over Napster with regards to searching – firstly it can return more than 100 results – it will simply go on searching until it finds no more or you
tell it to stop. Secondly, it also displays the other users status, i.e. if the file is available – in Napster there was no indication of this, and your file was simply placed into a queue, with WinMX you can see if this will be the case, and download a more readily available file.

WinMX makes use of the same type of filters as Napster; you can limit your results to greater, less than, or equal to a certain connection speed, and the same way with bitrate. It’s at this stage I should point out that WinMX is not simply for MP3 files; you can download all types of files with it, such as movies or pictures. A quick search revealed plenty of movies available, including current cinema releases, but unless you have a broadband connection, these are going to be pretty useless, weighing in at around 500MB each, with each movie comprising of two such files. You should be careful about downloading files though, and scan everything, especially the likes of Microsoft Office documents, zip files and application files, just in case they would have something nasty in them.

So then, you’ve found the file you want, how do you get a hold of it? Exactly the same way as Napster, double click the file and away you go, it moves to the download screen. The download screen is more or less the same as Napster, displaying the amount of file downloaded, the speed it is currently downloading at, the estimated time to finish and a progress bar. You can watch the progress as a graph if you want, the amount downloaded each second displayed as a bar, and so you can compare the download speed over time. Again, anyone who has used Napster is going to feel at home, but there are a few extra features. There is a folder button, which will open up the folder you download into if you select it. There are the standard buttons to cancel transfers, and clear any completed ones, as well as the button where you can alter the maximum number of downloads or uploads you can ma
ke at any time.

There are a few extra functions to make WinMX light years ahead of Napster – first of all the bandwidth tab – a button where you can alter the amount of your bandwidth you make available to downloads from your system, useful if you have plenty of MP3s people are trying to download, and it’s slowing your connection down, just decrease the amount of bandwidth you allow them, and your connection should speed up again. The second, and perhaps most useful is the resume feature. Click this button, and it displays a list of any connections that where not finished, for whatever reason, and gives you the option to begin them again. It isn’t a perfect feature; it isn’t the same as Audiogalaxy, where it will resume from an identical file, as with WinMX, the original user you downloaded from must also be available and the file still present. Provided they aren’t busy, selecting this will kick start the download again, I’ve tried it a few times and it seems to work perfectly, nice for downloading bigger files, especially if you are downloading a large application.

Overall, the speeds of downloads are also impressive. Obviously it depends on the user you download from, but when downloading form a fast connection, I have noticed a marked improvement on what I achieved with Napster – up from 4.6K/s with Napster to almost 5K/s with WinMX. The server can occasionally have slow spells, but Napster was affected by that problem at times as well.

One thing WinMX lacks is an internal player for MP3 files, but that doesn’t matter, as it will automatically start your default player if you want to play your MP3 anyway. As I never used the internal player in Napster anyway it isn’t a great loss to me, but it’s worth mentioning. It’s also great to be able to listen to the MP3 as it downloads, to check the quality, rather than having to wait for it to finish like in Bearshare or A
udiogalaxy.

Like Napster, WinMX has a chat tab at the top, and pressing it allows you to enter the chatroom. I didn’t use it in Napster, and I haven’t used it here, but it’s useful if you want to find someone to talk to while you’re downloading. You can also private message anyone using the service while you’re connected.

WinMX has a hotlist as well, but it is the one feature where it lets Napster beat it. WinMX can only assign users to your hotlist on a temporary basis, when you exit the program your hotlist is cleared. It seems a bit pointless to have this feature if you can’t save the list, but you can browse the available files from that user via this feature.

Just a few more features to mention – like Napster, you have a shared files tab, which displays the contents of any folders on your hard drive you, have chosen to share. The other tabs are the help feature, which takes you to the help section of the web site, which is comprehensive and easy to follow, although the program is also simple and hopefully you shouldn’t need this. The final tab is the settings tab, where you can change user, the appearance of the program and alter the username and password. Unless you make a major mess when installing the program, you shouldn’t ever have to use the section.

If you can’t tell from my opinion already, I love this program. Easy to use and install, it’s just like Napster before it had all it’s trouble, and even better beside. It has the ability to share more than just MP3s, and with a decentralised server, hopefully it should escape any legal action in the near future. If I had found out about this before now, I would have stopped using Napster a long time ago. If you ever used Napster, and found it useful, you’re going to love this. With the exodus from Napster increasing, I think this could really take off as it is so similar, and the more people that
use it, then the more files will be available to the whole network, so everyone will be happy!

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