Hi,

I've been meaning to post this question for a while but I always get sidetracked. Now that I'm switching from XP to Windows 7 I figured I'd kill a few birds with one stone (not cool birds like parrots or emus, though, so don't worry ) and get all my questions out.

My first question has to do with B25's stability. I started using it after reading AW's sabotage thread a few years ago and have had good luck with it. However, every once in a while the program will basically wet the bed: I'll configure the settings, customize the display, save my searches and go to work, but for reasons I can't fathom and at intervals that appear to be random, I'll launch the program one day and find that all my customizations are gone. I have to start from square one all over again. Has anyone else experienced this? Is there any way to prevent this? It's a real pain and I'd like to avoid it if possible.

Because of this stability issue I was wondering if there was any discernible performance difference between B25 and one of the last safe BS Lite clients like 5.1.0.27 or .28. I understand that the beta has no limit on the number of download sources, but given that I rarely see more than 10-20 working connections I would like to know if I'll see any real-world impact. Also, if I remember correctly, BS lite installs some sort of ad-ware, but it's possible to block it by adding the necessary info to your hosts file, correct?

As for Windows 7, are there any known issues with either the beta or lite version of Bearshare? Is anybody currently using both?

On an unrelated topic, why do I get a shitload more search hits and file sources with Bearshare than I do with any of the other p2p apps? I've tried Phex, Limewire, and Frostwire, but the last time I tried a head-to-head comparision between them (over a year ago) BS outperformed those three in the above categories by at least a full order of magnitude and I'm not exaggerating. In fact, most of the time I either got no results from them or a bunch of unrelated and distinctly low-rent porn listings. Does BS have some super-secret Awesome Sauce™ and the others haven't been able to duplicate the recipe?

Lastly, from reading The Rules, should I infer that questions about ISP monitoring policies pertaining and pursuant to DMCA takedown notices are verboten?


Any advice anybody could give me on these matters would be much appreciated.