I'm interested in being able to download music and video now I've got broadband. There are a plethora of peer-2-peer places around - I wondered which one came out tops in peoples' opinion. Or alternatively should I give the whole thing a miss? Will it bugger around with my computer? What pit-falls are there to doing P2P stuff? And what - if any - precautions can I take to ensure the scare stories I've heard don't come true? Thanks.
Don't upload. There's a checkbox someplace to disable that. That's mainly how the RIAA is finding people. Don't use Kazaa. Spyware central. Even if there's a pay version that says "Pay and get 100% legal, spyware free", still use extreme caution. When you set the program up, it'll want you to put your files in some default directory. Change that download file to something else. Even if you pay for one of the legal sites, the files are all encoded so you can't have total freedom with them. Video's a little trickier. You'll get some with questionable quality, others with subtitles, some with both....
kazaa-lite (spyware free version of kazaa)is the best software... unfortunately its been attacked by record companies who have flooded the network with corrupt files .Its impossible to get any new songs. Winmx is getting better....the software is more crude than kazaa but it aint bad .I use it to get the newer songs which you can never get on kazaa lite.
Thanks guys. Unfortunately my gf had decided (without me) to get 'morpheus'. Any word on that? I might uninstall it anyway as I don't know what she did when getting it (preferences etc).
morpheus aint on the same level as lazaa lite or winmx.. download kazaa lite from here.. http://www.logiciel-telecharger.com/internet/kazaalite_202.zip get winmx from here... http://www.winmx.com/ I have both of them on my PC..
Ok Morpheus will shortly be gone then. But just to put me in the picture, what makes morpheus worse than the ones you listed? I'm not up to speed on what makes a good P2P place - last one I used was Napster - the free one, so you can tell it was a while ago. You said Kazzaa lite is good, but not for new songs. I'm not likely to be downloading too many new songs anyway - more like classic albums I've been wanting - is everything else ok on there?
Morpheus doesnt have as many users .Its a less popular network so you've got less stuff to download.... Kazaa lite is generally alright for older stuff... You ocassionally get a corrupt file for an older track but overall its alright. If I cant get something from kazaa then I try and get it from winmx.. If im really desperate than I go to the altavista search engine and do an mp3 search.. http://www.altavista.com/audio/default
I like eMule. bittorrent is cool - but it's not really a P2P system, but a distributed hosting system. There is no built-in search function - you have to find torrents on your own.
Man, don't confuse me Sorry to say, anything without a search function probably isn't for me. Will have a look at eMule though.
Thanks guys. I, too, was going to ask this. Maybe this should be a sticky. Foos, you the mod here? If not, apply!
Those of you who want an excuse to check out bittorrent, head on over to http://torrent.guilfoos.com/ and download the 60 Minutes interview of Freddy Adu. If you don't see the link (adu.mpg), try reloading the page a minute or so later (it seems a little bit intermittent).
http://home.quicknet.nl/qn/prive/romeria/bittorrentsites.htm anyone who uses bit torrent should check out this link.. loads of links to various torrent sites..
You beat me to it sinner - well partially. How does bittorrent work? H0w does one find out where to find certain things? For example I want to find comedy episodes (y'know Alan Partridge etc etc etc), how do I go about finding specific stuff? Not just directed at sinner - anyone can help
I either do a Google search, i.e. "bittorrent Kill Bill" or go to bt.topmango.com, ****************.com or torrents.reviewed.homelinux.org. Bittorrent is better for new stuff, because your ability to link to other people's files depends on their downloading the files at the same time, but you can make requests at the above sites. Also, the contents tend to be US-centric, but that also means you can get certain TV shows (i.e. today's episode of 24 or Sunday's Sopranos) and movies before they air in the UK.
You have to search on Google for bittorrent sites. Usually they are themed by topic. There is no central network - bittorrent only distributes large files to people who know where the file is, but it does that very well. For example, I know of one site (http://knowbuddy.dyndns.org:6969/) that specializes in episodes of the show Alias.
Thanks guys - obviously something I'm going to have to look into. Seems a bit confusing to a bearer of small brain and half a box of wine.
http://btplusplus.sourceforge.net/ anyone wants to use bittorrent should use the bit-torrent++ version.. you dont get those "donation requests" with this version and it comes spyware free. And maczebus....if you want something then you basically have to go looking through all these countless sites that are out there... http://home.quicknet.nl/qn/prive/romeria/bittorrentsites.htm there are 500+ sites on that link to check out... I've got it but i've hardly used it... Im no expert on it so its best to ask more experienced users..
www.suprnova.org has listing by category and is also searchable - i think they are the biggest sometimes it goes down, but you can always find a mirror by clicking the "mirror" link at the top of www.robotolabs.cjb.net (which is, btw, the best place to download simpsons episodes; small files, high quality)
BD, which site is the best for downloading Scrubs episodes. I'm pretty much caught up on every episode, but there are a couple I haven't watched because Xvid avi files don't play well with Macs, and most of the first season episodes are only available in Xvid AVIs.
OK, so I won't pretend that I'm now a master at this bittorrent thing - or indeed as to how it works - but over the last few days I've been dabbling... Not too many problems, however... wanting to download some 'Black Books' episodes, I am told (by google) that ****************.com has it. So I go there, find it, then click on download. At that point I'm expecting a 'torrent file' to be put onto my computer for me to click and commence the download - as all the others had done. But instead, upon clicking download it quickly downloaded something to a 'temporary folder' which cannot be found - nor can I find the torrent file that I thought I downloaded (ie, the contents of his 'temporary folder'). I've tried right clicking and 'save target as' but that doesn't work. Any body any ideas on what's going on? As I say, other downloads have worked, though I'm not sure whether it's a problem at my end or specifically at ****************.com.