*Update* Napster Who? Is WinMX The New King Of The File-Sharing World? (WinMX)

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	WinMX
Date:	24/02/02 (3458 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: loads of files, total control of searching/downloading, feature packed

Disadvantages: over complicated??, QUEUEING

Napster is dead, file sharing isn't.

In fact, since the demise of Napster(well it's dead as far as I am concerned) file sharing has just increased in volume rather than it being stamped out as the music industry had hoped. Now, you have access not only to MP3s, but software programs, images, documents and even complete movies if you have the time and patience to download 400MB+ files on a 56k modem! Of course if you have a high speed internet connection then you're well away. A number of programs which allow this kind of sharing have sprung up or increased in popularity since Napster effectively bit the dust. The likes of Morpheus, Kazaa, eDonkey, Gnotella, Bearshare, iMesh, Filetopia, Limewire...and so on, the list is seemingly endless and ever-growing, have all arisen hoping to take the crown of the best new filesharing program out there. A few months ago I would have said Morpheus had the crown but since KaZaA pulled the rug out from under it in an extremely aggressive shut-out from their filesharing network it's moved onto a new network, changed interface and frankly sucks. WinMX is, I believe, the best option out there at the moment.

One of the things you should look out for when choosing a file-sharing program is the security features. You have to remember that you are effectively opeing up your hard disk to investigation by other members on the same network as you so you don't want some hacker being able to take a walk around your system! Most seem to ave this covered, there was a report about Morpheus being wide open to attack but this has been officially denied, the source was iffy and no one has substantiated it - seems to be bunkum. The security issues you actually have to worry about come bundled with the software itself! Forget hackers and think "spyware", "hijackware", "thiefware", "foistware" etc. instead. Huh? Yes I know, meaningless bunch of technobabble to most people but

what this basically means is that age old saying is as true with the internet as it is anywhere else:

"There is no such thing as a free lunch"

Sure, the software itself is free, the files you download are free too but no software company is going to go to all the trouble and expense of creating, marketing and maintaining a software program like KaZaA or Morpheus etc. without there being something in it all for them now are they? What a lot of these companies do is attach a bundle of additional components to their own software provided by other companies for a fee. Foistware is annoying, programs like Gator which request installation after you download the program you wanted - a simple cancel makes them go away. Spyware, hijackware etc. is more than annoying, it can actually be dangerous and it installs silently and sits in the background invisibly whilst you are connected online, tracking your surfing habits and sending back this information back to the company which owns it. The worst examples of this kind of thing track keystrokes or leach data from online form filling (VX2.dll being an example), providing password information and credit card details amongst other things which are sent back to a server somewhere for collection and use for who the hell knows what purpose.

If you have installed any free software then the chances are your privacy is being invaded by one of these companies, hopefully one of the less malicious ones. Its not just filesharing, but a lot of free software downloads contain it. Fortunately most of it is easy to remove, simply go to:

http://www.lavasoftusa.com

and download their free(yes this time it really is free!) piece of software called Ad-Aware, do a simple scan(it's idiot proof believe me) and it'll highlight the spyware and offer to remove it. Be warned though that some of these companies do not want you removing their spyware and if you use a product like Gator, t
hen y
ou'll notice it cease to function after the spyware has been removed. Best to kill the spyware and change to a spyware free productif you ask me, but its your choice(in the case of Gator, Roboform does the same job without spying on you by the way). Oh, and if you think "oh they're reputable company, everyone uses them so they must be OK", then think again. Audiogalaxy is one of the biggest MP3 sharing programs around, yet came bundled with a piece of spyware which they decided not to check out(their excuse was the companies do not make the code available to them - hah!). Turns out it recorded credit card details and sent them to an anonymous email address and also that the company address give to audiogalaxy was bogus...over a month's worth of downloads came with this decidedly dodgy piece of software attached and installed without consent to people's systems. Doh!

All of which rambling leads me onto this product...

There are very few(presently) file sharing programs which come to you completely devoid of spyware and its bretheren WinMX is one, XoloX is another - Morpheus is NO LONGER a good guy in this respect, don't be fooled by their claims. Fortunately, they are two of the better filesharing programs as well although XoloX is new and seems to have few fils on offer. WinMX is more established and DOES have plenty of files on offer on it's own network as well as allowing you to connect up to certain other servers to increase the number of files you can use...but I wouldn't say it was a program for newbies.

The first thing which strikes you about WinMX when you install it and run the software is that its hardly the most user friendly piece of software. In fact, my first impression was basically "oh sh*t" when faced with its initially incredibly daunting interface. On access you get an initial servers screen which lets you know if it's connecting. There are various options to f
iddle with
but basically you'll just want to let it do it's 'ting' which is to connect to one! WinMX connects to the OpenNap network and all you really need to know is "not connected.." bad, "connecting..." good "connected too..." ready to go. It gets me by anyway. If you are a little more techie minded thean me then you'll have a field day with this software because its packed full of options and tweaks...

...which is its biggest problem.

WinMX suffers from having far too many options and not enough documentation to enable an average user to be able to use it. If you are a computer dunce then forget it, you'll be lost here. If you are an average user then you'll 'get by' like I do, but you'll never understand all the features and always feel somewhat alienated by the program. For an advanced user though it just perfect. You can twiddle and tweak away until your heart's content with all the multitude of options here. The interface is though rather horrible. It is as if the designers had a bazillion ideas, and just threw them together. Its incredibly cluttered and unorganised, but its not that navigation is difficult. There are tabs neatly arranged and labelled along the top of the screen which themselves draw up more menus, and inside those a billion options. But it is as if they didn't know where to put things so they just threw loads of miscellaneous option into various unintuitive categories. This is the single most off-putting thing about this program...

...but then, as an average user of it, you probably won't want to go dabbling around with all the scary stuff anyway!

Get past the initial shocking interface of this program(its actually excellent, offering a fully customizable experience which no other offers) and you are onto the stuff which sorts the wheat from the chaff :

Searching
Availabillity of Files
Download speeds


These
are the main things which I look for in a file-sharing program. No point having it if you can never find the files you want, or they download sooooo slowly that you might get them by next Christmas or if the search engine is so iffy that its a pain in he butt to use! Fortunately, WinMX excels in all three of these areas.

~Searching~

Continuining with its theme of being fully customisable(or horrendously cluttered depending on your viewpoint) the search facility here offers a huge number of search options to get you exactly what you want. You can search by a title/artist, select which server you want to search on(or all), select you file type - video, picture, audio other than MP3, MP3 and a vast selection of bitrates - or just all MP3s, or just all files, and specify the minimum speed of user to download from so you can get a lightning fast T3 download instead of a snailpace 14.4k modem. Results are shown in a large results window detailing a bunch of info. about the file such as its name, size, username, speed(cable, 1 etc.) and whether its available. You can ping these results to give even more information about which to donwload from as well. Results are returned quickly and a simple doubleclick on the filename will start the download.

WinMX is NOW multi-source where as it used to only allow you to connect to one other user at a time. Multi-source filesharing means you can connect to more than one user at a time and download the file from several sources at once. For users with high-speed connections this means that you can get lightning fast speeds, for those on dial-up it means if one goes offline it does't mean that your download is over, but that you have the others to fall back on. Great for both parties and solves the old problem of queueing which killed this program for many.

~Availability of Files~

There are masses of files available here, nothing has yet to reach the standard of Napster
for MP3s and neithe
r does this, but there are still many, many files to be found on here - I've never had a problem finding what I wanted. Even found the Ying Tong Song last night because I wanted to hear it following dear old Spike Milligan's death. :o(

A gripe about this program though would not be actually finding the files but getting them to download. Sure, its just a simple click of the mouse but then theres...the QUEUE. Many of the more popular files will find you dumped in a queue to receive them. Sometimes a couple of minutes, sometime infinitely long queues. Queues can be of 80+ people and if you have a slow connection like mine you tend to find yourself moving down that queue rather than up! I also find myself disconnected a few times but I'm sure that has more to do with people not wanting to share with a 56k modem than WinMX being problematic. This problem is NOWHERE near as bad as it once was thanks to WinMX switching to multi-source downloading, but queues are always a pain and I do think this is slightly worse for queueing than the other major players out there. It does however support a resume feature on files, so no matter how many times the link is broken you can carry on downloading the same file from a different source. This is essential for file sharing, but still some programs like Bearshare do not feature it!

~Download Speeds~

In my experience these are excellent, by far the best I have found in filesharing programs anywhere. I have AOL(still) and download speeds are never exactly wonderful. Usually I get around 3-4kbs on general downloads online sometimes less, very rarely more. Morpheus says it downloads from several sources at once to speed up downloads as does WinMX now, but I can't say I've ever noticed a difference, download speeds there used to be 3.5 - 4kbs, whilst now they are awful. WinMX is giving me at the time of writing this op. a speed which is varying from around 4 - 5kbs wh
ich is excellent for my s
ystem, and others claim too that the download speeds are good, and can be improved on faster connections(with some more of that scary looking technical tweaking). At one stage or another(however briefly) I have used all the bigger file-sharing programs out there and this is certainly the fastest I have come across.

~Other Bits and Pieces~

To talk about all the features of this program would be impossible. Like I said, it's as if someone had an enormous brainstorm and tossed every single idea they could think of incorporating into one program and the result is WinMX. Other features to mention in passing would be the obligatory chat function which lets you converse in real time with other online members - to set up file swaps, etc. or just plain out chat. Sharing your own files is as simple as browing a directory tree and adding a tick next to the folder(s) you wish to share from, being VERY careful not to share a tree branch, with all its folders of course! You can also specify what type of files to share, so if you just want to share MP3s then thats all that will be displayed no matter which folder you select. There is also a "hotlist" to add friends to (although it's temporary so quite useless really!)...

Erm, one thing I haven't yet got to grips with is the connection to other servers than the main WinMX owned ones. None of them seem to connect! Whether that's because I have an old server list, my connection is deemed too slow or it's feature of the new software which is yet to be made fully functional I don't know, but it used to work with the old software and now it doesn't for me. Probably just inept user error of course..;o)

~Omissions~

Its amazing when you consider everything that this program does have to then talk about what it doesn't. As an ex-Morpheus user the first thing you'll notice missing is a 'player' of some kind to play
back all those files you have
downloaded. This doesn't come bundled with the software so you'll need to have Windows Media Player or something similar on your system(and open) to be able to see or hear what you have downloaded. Another omission would be documentation! The old documentation before the software was re-released with more featues was weak, but months later the new one STILL has no online documentation as to it's features and how to use them!! When you consider it's not the most user-friendly piece of software I'd say this was quite a major omission myself and very poor to take so long to put documentation of any kind online!

~Overall~

Overall, it's a damn fine piece of software but very cluttered and disorganised and it'll scare the pants off any newbie user because of that fact. If you can stick with it then its worth the effort and now that Morpheus has begun to suck more than a toothless grandma served with corn-on-the-cob and KaZaA still insists on bundling the very WORST spyware on the net it's download then it's the only viable choice. WinMX is vastly superior in terms of functionality to these two anyway but the two gripes are rather large ones. Other than the queueing and the clutter it's perfect! Definitely recommended anyway.

Summary: