A WINning MiX (WinMX)

Member Name: utero

Product:	WinMX
Date:	02/06/01 (255 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good search, easy to download, easy setup

Disadvantages: a bit slow, can be hard accessing files you want

Well it looks like Napster is really starting to dry up on the MP3 file's front. Certainly if you do find what you're looking for then the chances are that you'll be kicked off mid-download. Still it was good while it lasted.

My stance on MP3 is this. I don't think the audio quality is as good as cd, there's just something that's a litle flat in the low end for me and it has a bit of a compressed sound. I don't download MP3 files to get the latest sounds for nothing. It's purely so I can listen to the track before the album comes out as I don't buy the over-priced singles in the stores. I occasionally will download a track that I haven't heard for a while or something I'm curious about just becasue I don't want to fork out for an entire album of songs I won't like. This is where record companies aren't seeing the potential for back catalogue material.

So I came onto DooYoo and noticed a handful of opinions on WIN MX and they all seemed quite positive. I headed over to the site and downloaded the software at a size of 1.6Mbs. The setup was very quick and easy. The software logs onto a network of servers and in the same way as Napster you just type what you're looking for and it then goes off and looks for it.

You can specify what connection speeds, bitrate etc you want included in your searches to narrow down the list as well. The search doesn't just stop at MP3 files, it also includes video and picture formats to give a very universal search criteria.

It comes back with a list of files you can access from other users. Now i would say you can pretty much find whatever you want but downloading it is another matter. most of the time you'll find that the server is busy or in a queue. Sometimes it won't connect at all. When you do finally get the chance to download something it can take quite a while. It's quite disheartening to see that transfer rate go from a
n average rate of 4.5K a sec to zilch. it just seems a lot slower than Napster.

Some of the software elements are crowded and not very easy to understand so you will have to do a bit of reading on it to figure everything out. But I would imagine this software will improve once more people become aware of it. More users means better access for everyone. That is until it's shut down by the record company bigwigs of course.

Summary: