I have a few comments and issues about version 2.8.5. First off I feel that I have more success with this program more often than any other file sharing program. Recently though problems have caused me to investigate other options. I am currently using Aqusition. Both have their pros and cons. I would like to use Limewire more often but it is so frustrating sometimes.

Limewire Issues -
First and most frustating of all, it hogs all the memory on my computer unless I hide it.(This makes copying the bug information hell and not worth it.)

It constanly quits unexpectedly, even when I am not transfering files.

Pop up alerts show blank until I run the mouse over certain areas of the box.(This seems to have gotten better with this version.

I don't think it needs CHAT. You can barely use it as is.

This being said, it is a good program for the money. I would be willing to pay more for PRO, IF it worked well.


I have used aquisition a few times recently, and there are a few benefits it has that I wish Limewire had.

It allows me to use other programs easily with out hiding it. YES! I like that.

Aquisition shows which hosts are offline line, rather than just showing me that the connections is sending and inquiry of the host. ( Maybe indicate which host are online in the search menu for Limewire.)

I feel that Aquistion is still lacking but the memory issue of Limewire is enough to make me use Aquistion more often.

Thanks

Acquisition is LimeWire with a native GUI. The java GUI is the part of LimeWire using most of the resources.

Display bugs are often bugs in your Java Runtime Environment. Maybe there are work-arounds LimeWire could use but LimeWire will not be able to circumvent all those JRE bugs.

Chat works fine if you have a direct connection to the internet.

The reason for the LimeWire crashes on MacOSX is AFAIK still unknown. It's probably an issue with Apple's JRE as well. On most other systems LimeWire will run on Sun's JRE which is not as buggy and a little faster as well.

Searches do not return results of hosts which are offline, - I never used Acquisition but all hosts you will find in a search should be accessible at the time, you receive the result. If the download will succeed is a completely different question. It will probably fail if you and the remote host are both firewalled. There are efforts to solve that problem at protocol level.

P.S.

The LimeWire developers could easily solve some of the performance problems by breaking compatibility to MacOS9- which still uses a very old Java Runtime Environment (1.1.8 while 1.4 is the current JRE for most other systems).

There are rumors about Sun's new JREs performing a lot better than 1.4 but as I mentioned Sun does not plan on making its JRE available for MacOS or MacOSX.