I'm here preparing for a life w/o Napster.

Over the last few hours I've read docs and opinions on websites, forums and newsgroups about Gnutella. I decided to try gnotella, limewire and bearshare in that order. So far I've installed and used only gnotella.

Here's what I think:
"It's not Napster but it's useable."
+ Ok GUI, It's "skinnable" too.
+ Title searches are fast
+ I like the "Spy" and "Monitor on" feature that shows what others are searching: you guys are SICK!

- I'm not sure how to duplicate the "Browse User" feature of Napster where you can browse a like-minded peers share
- I'd like to be able to check the MP3's bitrate before I download it. Should be easy to do as this metadata is available.
- Gnutella uses are not very nice. Too many seem to hide behind firewalls.

To compare "gnutella" to Napster I decided to find a file I had problems locating in Napster. I failed but it could be that I don't have the right name.

Next I tried to download a common song. I choose "B**tles - Y*st*rday". (Wasn't that voted most popular somewhere). Found a few hundred sites willing to share. Most were behind a firewall :-( I choose a non-fw site and started downloading.

Everything was going great until the connection was "killed by the other side" but all in all I can work with this. (Like I have a choice.)

Sampson
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Edited to comply with the House Rules.
Warez, copyright violation, or any other illegal activity may NOT be linked or expressed in any form.

Inappropriate post deleted.

[This message has been edited by CycloCide (edited 04-01-2001).]

I too tried clients and in roughly the same order. My findings:

LimeWire:
. nice interface, intuitive to use.
. unacceptable CPU usage -- roughly 20% of my PIII/600.
. unacceptable bandwidth usage. though set to limit its upload bandwidth to roughly 56k speeds it chewed through over 200 kbps as measured by the router through mrtg. looks like mostly query-related traffic.
. grew in RAM to around 20M
. written in JAVA

BearShare:
. comes shipped with too much extra stuff -- streaming advertisements, an alternate-TLD plugin that excludes .web, some undocumented wizard, etc.
. much better on the usage. 5%, while sharing around 700 files and connected to three hosts.
. runs around 30kbps (self-reported) just for the queries.
. per-connection upload figures are really bouncy. not averaged over even the past few seconds.
. using 17M ram.

Gnotella:
. after reading the thread on CPU usage i avoided it entirely.


Until a client is devised that can better manage its utilization of the physical network, this is not a service I can leave running 24/7.

Don't worry, you're not the only one who is finding files without napster, a big pain in the ***! I've never seen the like & I tried bearshare, gnucleus, limewire & gnotella-the latter of those 4 is the only one where I can actually get a file or 2 down-& as far as the rest go...well, I can't use the words I'd like to!

I really have a problem with the "+avail" behind a firewall...hell-o! How can a file be both???!!! I guess free file downloading just ain't what it used to be *sigh*

Good luck...you're gonna need it!

hey geinius..... you can still download stuff from people behind firewalls. you may just have to wait a while longer for the push.. thats all...

i really don't understand what all the complaints are about.
Gnutella works.
Within 2 weeks, I've extracted more than 3 GB of (rare) audio material from the network, using DSL provided by DT.
Now isn't that a decent amount of noise?
I've mainly used Gnotella, it is by far the best client out there. No other programme delivers better search results-
ok, there are instabilites and so on... for the ex-napster users, Bearshare and Limewire are probably the best choices, anyway, cuz they are oh-so sleak in appearance and create a certain "everything's nominal" athmosphere.
What really SUCKS about those clients is that the search functionality is bad in handling and only returns few good hits, even with many hosts connected.
Finding rare stuff is almost impossible with those blunts.
Use GNOTELLA.

Yeah it works!

Gnotella is a really OK program. I don't think everyone sharing files on Gnutella want to be without protection from all the porn lunatics out there (I don't mean people sharing files, I'm talking about those kids with to much time and to little respect). There is a difference in sharing .mp3's and sharing any old file.

And if the Gnutella network tries to make their services too mp3 friendly, guess what? That's right: Napsterification... Totally killing off the idea with filesharing (and suckin' some major recordompany d**k).

I too downloaded GB upon GB with great stuff. Rare music mostly...Or just good music!

BTW, I think it should be mandatory to download at least one Metallica song just to **** 'em off!

pax