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I downloaded a few clients today, and here's what I thought:
BearShare=
In terms of looks, it sucked next to limewire. Big BearSharers are always bragging about their QoS, it was nice, but the simple LimeWire 4-Star style is better. What I really like about it is the QHD ID thing, and also you can see how many query hits you have on a file. It's nice to know who you're downloading from or uploading to. The "Statistics" page had a little too much info on it for me, others might want that. What really got me is that it automatically shares your entire hard drive.
Gnucleus=
A lot of people like Gnucleus, so I tried it out for size. It was very claustrophobic, with all the seprate windows for each single function. Through the mess of the windows, I found a couple of features I liked, like the minimize to tray. It's the only working one I've found. I still think it looks (Em. on looks, it really isn't) too complicated for me.
Phex=
I really like this one. It has the cross-platform look thing, similar to LimeWire, so it looks fine. As with BearShare, it can ID clients (But it doesn't ID ISP's) and lists the query hits. The search within results looked good, but I didn't use it. Like LimeWire, you can view incoming searches. It doesn't block freeloaders, which is a small deterent.
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Phex is the only one still on my computer.
I still like LimeWire overall, but I like some of the others features.
Suggestions:
1. Client ID (BearShare, Phex)
2. Minimum size (BearShare)
3. Minimum speed (Phex)(Phex uses a different scoring system, but it would work on LimeWire)
4. ISP ID (BearShare)
5. Minimize to tray (Gnucleus)
6. Query hit counts (Bearshare, Phex)
If any developers have replies, I would like to hear them, and if any BS, Phex, Gnucleus have replies, that would be good too.


Kirby
[IMG]http://**************.com/ms/kirbykore/images/kirbywave.gif[/IMG]

Dont forget, <b>Phex</b> does auto re-searching, this means that if you walk away from the computer or go to sleep, when you wake up the next day, it will have found other locations to download from and start downloading from them. This feature has allowed me plenty of sleep while my computer is constantly looking for the files to download and then downloading them. My download results have increased from 1 to 2 over night, to 6 to 7.

To the top

You know, I don't understand this whole deal with Window's users and the tray. I mean come on. Your not saving memory by having them there, so who really cares? So it looks a tad cleaner at the bottom of your screen, big whip. If it were all that easy to put it there, I'm sure the LimeWire developers would have done it already. Obviously they have more important things to worry about.


Who need fences when you've got Windows? :-P

Client ID? If your talking about what I think you are, would that not require some sort of registration? I mean, maybe there could be a masquerade as option, but I think most limewire users prefer it the way it is. Most, that is.... Not all. Particularly Ex-napster users I would think to be the ones that would want that option, but look where napster is now.

Kirby-

Thanks for the suggestions.

We are working on many of the primarily user interface features that you described, and should have some of them implemented in the not-too-distant future.

Over the past several months, the LimeWire team has been spending a lot of time on more research-oriented projects that are just now coming to fruition, and that should make dramatic improvements to the network in the next six months. While I don't want to go into more detail, these changes include making the Gnutella network an advanced searching tool for all types of information, not only file sharing. They also include making vast improvements in bandwidth usage on the network and in the number of searchable files.

That said, we still remain strongly committed to the fundamental user issues that you have brought up, and we will continually be adding these types of features moving forward.

With regard to the tray issue, it takes about 30 seconds to implement this in a native Windows application. Doing it from Java requires much more sophisticated code. We have it implemented for Windows NT/2000, and I'm working on it for 95/98/ME.

Thanks to everyone for the valuable input.

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BearShare and Phex do that, and they don't need registration.

Kirby
[IMG]http://**************.com/ms/kirbykore/images/kirbywave.gif[/IMG]