[finknottle]

I'm just wondering which File Sharing Porgrams are the best to use for OSX.3? I have been using Limewire Pro for about a year which I find stable but I understand there are many alternatives. What are people around here using and why? I mostly like to download music before I buy it and occasionally episodes of enterprise or 24 that I have missed (Limewire is bad at that). I have just over 10000 mp3s in my shared folder (almost all mine by the way!!) if that has any bearing...
Thank you in advance!

[mdc]

poisoned and acquisitiion

both good.

[aschexl]

Are these free of spyware?

[Spliff]

Originally posted by aschexl:
Are these free of spyware?

Yes, no current Mac file-sharing apps contain spyware.

Good file-sharing programs:

- Acquisition: very nice interface; can use for free but nags you every 45 mins.
- Acqlite: similar to Acquisition, but uglier. But it's free.
- DirectConnect: several clients. High learning curve, but potentially worth it.
- Bittorrent: excellent and fast. But files stale-date quickly and you have to find sites that list bittorrent urls
- MlMac: GUI interface for MLDonkey. Huge numbers of files. Works well, but downloads are slow. You need patience to use it, but it works. Access to the Kazaa network
- Poisoned: works well. Access the Kazaa network.
- Carracho: Mac-only. Very community oriented. Need tracker urls to find servers (get these from http://www.tracker-tracker.com/)
- Hotline: Mac and PC. Similar to Carracho. Lots of PC scamming jerks. Get trackers from http://www.tracker-tracker.com/. Several Mac Hotline clients (e.g., Frogblast)
- KDX: like Hotline/Carracho, but more secure. Ugly non-Mac interface, but works well. need trackers.
- Xnap: java app for downloading music (like Limewire). Works pretty well.
- 2get: doesn't work well
- eetee: bloated and ineffective
- IRC: an excellent resource for file-sharing, but very hard to understand. Not worth the effort unless you want to spend several days reading tutorials to understand IRC chat commands.
- Usenet clients (see below) such as Unison and MT-Newswatcher.

There are one or two others that I missed, but they don't work well.

Your best bets for music are Acquisition or Acqlite, Poisoned, and Xnap. Bittorrent and MlMac are best for TV shows.

If your ISP has a decent number of usenet groups, then using a newsreader like MT-Newswatcher or Unison (very nice interface) is an awesome way to get music and TV shows. If your ISP's usenet service sucks, then you can sign up with one of several sites that offer excellent usenet access. Usenet use requires some knowledge of how the binaries are posted and decoded.

[ryju]

LimeWire was previously reported to have a type of spyware in it, I think it was the limeshop or some BS.

[brutal]

If you get Fink you can build Nicotine, a Soulseek client! Definitely the best way to get music!

[Eyenovation]

Hard to beat Acquisition in my opinion.

[malvolio]

Spliff gave an excellent summary of the available p2p options. But I do disagree with one of his comments.
I found IRC pretty easy to learn, and it has become one of my favorite file-sharing programs. There is an excellent tutorial here.

[Spliff]

Originally posted by malvolio:
Spliff gave an excellent summary of the available p2p options. But I do disagree with one of his comments.
I found IRC pretty easy to learn, and it has become one of my favorite file-sharing programs. There is an excellent tutorial here.

Thanks for the tutorial. My problem with IRC was not finding and logging into the various chatrooms. Rather, it was hard to figure the actual commands (syntax, etc) for searching for and downloading the files. It seems to vary alot depending on the chatroom.

[malvolio]

Originally posted by Spliff:
Thanks for the tutorial. My problem with IRC was not finding and logging into the various chatrooms. Rather, it was hard to figure the actual commands (syntax, etc) for searching for and downloading the files. It seems to vary alot depending on the chatroom.

It's been my experience that if you hang out in a chatroom for a while, some of the DCC (file-sharing) bots will post the exact commands needed for searching & downloading.

[saranwarp]

Acquisition is great...one of the very few shareware programs I've actually bought.