Ok, having had a wee question from Womble regarding where I get all my films etc from I thought id do a wee post regarding P2P file sharing programs and what the best ones are, so here goes:

P2P - The Menace of the Film and Music Industries

Ok, we all know how P2P works, you download stuff and share it with others, but some programs are better than others... I have been using P2P software for a couple of years now and have a fairly extensive collection of music, games, warez and films. Im not gonna say how much in case someone undesirable reads this post but lets just say its alot! I therefore consider myself fairly up to date and knowledgable on P2P stuff and am constantly changing which programs are my favs and ill give a quick description of the main ones out at the moment and some points about them.

Some of the Famous Ones

1. Kazaa - www.kazaa.com - basically Morpheus with a different front end. Not bad for getting MP3s but pretty much anything else its (comparatively to other programs) a bit crap for. FULL OF SPYWARE! Best thing to do is get kazaa lite from www.kazaalite.com i think which has none.

2. iMesh - www.imesh.com - fairly tasty program, which used to be one of my favs. Main installer has alot of spyware again tho but you can again get a lite version from somewhere else, just look on google. Pretty good for movies, ok for apps/warez and not bad for music.

3. Overnet/Bearshare/XoLoX & other Gnutella clients - www.gnutella.com - all different clients for the same basic gnutella sharing network which has LOADS of everything esp apps/warez/games/films/tv series. Not bad in their own right but can be a bit slow sometimes. Some clients are better than others but mainly its down to personal preference. Can be found by searching on google for their client names or simply for gnutella or heres a site which has some as well http://www.gnutelliums.com/

These are just 3 of the main programs ive used int he past which i now dont use either at all or very much.

My Top Three (in no particular order)

1. eDonkey - www.edonkey2000.com - will connect to both edonkey servers and overnet simultaneously, giving you the advantage of using two networks at the same time. You need to connect to specific hubs but there is a feature in the program that lets you download the latest list of servers from the main eDonkey site automatically. Can be slow but this is what Mojo always calls "old faithful". Some things may take a bit longer but they will come down eventually. You can usually find really obscure stuff on here as well which hardly anyone has. Amazing for gettin older stuff esp films and apps/games etc. Best feature is sharereactor! www.sharereactor.com (you may have seen their name on many divx and xvid movies in the past). This is a logging site for the whole of the eDonkey network meaning if you wanna get the latest films (pirates of the carribean was uploaded yesterday) you simply go to that site, click the link and it will add the file to your edonkey download list. All you have to do then is wait for it to start downloading from people... VERY COOL PROGRAM!!! Its also very good at stopping people leeching, you can maximise your upload rate but itll limit your DL to 4x your upload up to a max of 10k upload when you can then have unlimited DL. Probably my current fav esp as it seems to have been DLing stuff pretty fast recently, probably due to being mixed with overnet as well...

2. Direct Connect - www.neo-modus.com - similar to eDonkey in terms of requiring you to connect to a hub however you can even run a private hub just for yourself and your friends... a very nifty feature which means that no matter what, the record companies will never EVER be able to stop this program as people can simply run their own private hubs. The best thing of this program is you can actually browse peoples hard disks for files (esp people with good connections  and dl loads of stuff from them). One downside is that if someone disconnects from the hub then you usually have to wait ages for them to come back on which is v annoying if theyre the only person with a specific file so you cant just continue the dl from someone else.  Similarly it does have a search feature allowing you to request a search of files from everyone on the hub but you wont always find what you're looking for as DC hubs are usually around max 700 people or so compared to eDonkey which can be 100,000 people. Very good overall tho and absolutely AMAZING!!!! for getting mp3s because as you can see someones directories you can simply download entire albums from them... my fav MP3 downloading program by far!

3. BitTorrent - http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/ - quite new type of P2P. Works via a website which logs files. Its all a bit complex how it works but basically it boils down to going to a website and clicking links which then download a bit like you're simply downloading a file off the net only its actually P2P. This program is not bad for getting obscure stuff but its absolutely AMAZING for getting the latest episodes of TV programs plus any new films which are out, and you will get all the latest stuff at LIGHTNING speeds. A good example is 24 series 2. It played on a sunday night in the US and by 5am monday morning it was on bittorrent... pretty impressive i think you'll agree. You really need to find the best sites to get the best DLs and theres loads of sites dedicated to different types of DL's eg music, movies, anime, warez, etc etc... best thing to do is just look on google or try to find a cataloging site which lists some of the others. One of the most popular is suprnova www.suprnova.org for which i have found a fairly fast mirror (faster than the normal site) at www.fatiggi.com/suprnova/ to get you started...

Those are the three main ones I use at the moment and as I say i change my favs every few months but if it changes any time soon ill be sure to give you fair warning...

Hope this has proved informative for some of you and please do feel free to comment...

Well if any one knows our flat then you would know we download alot of stuff (i got 2.5 Gig in the past 3 days and King borbon got 3.3Gig in the past day and a half alone).

and So I thought I would add me own comments to this forum.

Bittorrent and suprnova are a very good system to get files (I got Tron 2.0 before even I know),  and it one of the main used systems in the flat,  edonkey is also used quite a bit.

If those who don't know,  Imesh and kazza (or the MUCH better Kazza lite) all runs on the same network so Lite is the better option because NO spy ware and lots of usefull tools.

King borbon also uses the newsgroups quite a bit to get new stuff.

Well I think thats my bit for the day.

lmao, yeh lets start a hub up xD when i get new hdd, therell be loads to dl off me lmao

ok lads, sorry for the MASSIVE delay but ive finally got the DC hub up and running and WSR^Cat is currently raping my MP3 collection as we speak... for those of you wanting in on the action go get DC or DC++ then connect to:

hub.alexgalbraith.com