napster alternatives who'll take over when napster croaks? Once beloved of MP3 music thieves young
and old, Napster has sold its soul and its userbase, forgetting of course that
we'd all rather use any free file-sharing application than pay for downloads.
Here are the five current best:
01 KaZaA & Morpheus www.kazaa.com / www.musiccity.com identical twins powered by Fasttrack, the finest file-sharing
app straight outta Holland
pros
the
most popular app out there by far more users than Napster recognises the ID3
tags in MP3 songs, so you can search by album and genre, not just by filename faster downloads:
the same file can be grabbed simultaneously from several sources
cons
KaZaA installs annoying 'adware' turning your browser into a giant commercial Only allows download
of MP3 tracks at a maximum of 128 kbps sound quality reported to slow down
and crash some computers
overall
As a cunning "distributed, self-organising network",
the system has no central server for the record labels to shut down… and it's
smoother and faster than Gnutella.
02 Aimster www.aimster.com freedom-fighting and insanely anti-record label chat/trading
software
pros
Mac
and PC versions easy to use, Napster-U-Like
interface encrypted, so privacy
is protected (and the Feds can't touch your ass)
cons
crazy cheap-porn photos of the founder's daughter on the homepage riddled with bugs,
you will experience crashing and incomplete files company under fire
with lawsuits from record giants and AOL
overall
The attention-grabbing antics of Aimster are reminiscent
of Napster's good old days, although the app itself needs some work
small
application (720k), also available on the Linux operating system broken downloads or
hard-to-find tracks auto-resume, even days later remote search: pick
tracks at a webcafe and they download to your home machine
cons
comes with Webhancer, an evil 'spyware' app which tracks your Net usage recently started filtering
out some copyrighted tracks a la Napster not possible to browse
through other users' shared music folders
overall
Pretty popular but suffers from the
centralised design: the Satellite's sluggish at peak times and the record company
hounds have caught its scent.
04 Limewire www.limewire.com the latest pretender to the Gnutella crown
pros
Mac,
PC and Linux versions available "anti-freeloader"
settings aim to prevent the selfish from downloading without sharing themselves grouping to choose
fastest download, queuing to resume broken transfers
cons
created in the Java programming language and thus prone to freezing computers a lot of patience
needed to find a working download annoying design flaws
- window can't be resized, not compatible with mouse scroll wheel
overall
With no central servers, the Gnutella
network is slower than a Big Brother housemate. But Limewire's anti-freeloader
option is a serious advance which should improve things somewhat.
05 Bearshare www.bearshare.com The first app to make sense of the open-source, underground
Gnutella network
pros
More
stable than Limewire That safe, familiar
Napster-like interface Resume download function
cons
also installs 'spyware' on your computer (it's how the software designers make
their money) logging on to hosts
takes longer than with Limewire as with Gnutella in
general, transfers can be slow, like a wet sponge
overall
As more music-trading systems get shot
down by the entertainment industry, Gnutella is more and more seeming like the
only option. But if watching paint dry is your thing, then Bearshare will have
you in ecstasy.
the
most popular app out there by far more users than Napster
