Favorite P2P Program

[Aristotle]

Ok, this is always changing so this warrants an occasional thread.

What is your favorite P2P program for things like music, video clips (tv shows, etc.), and whatnot.

I stopped using Kazaa a while back because it sucked behind a firewall.

I switched to Limewire and it was pretty decent.

Granted, I don't go looking for stuff that often, but it is handy on occasion.

What do you all use and why?

[Alhara]

I have used Shareaza now for quite some time, at least a year, since switching between audio galaxy, p2me, musicfire and Kazza after the fall of Napster.

http://www.shareaza.com/

This P2P is wonderful. Great interface, very adaptable player, seeks music, video, e-books, and others. Possible to have up to 15 search tabs open at the same time (possibly more). Search results are highly detailed and sortable by any of ten categories on the specs of the file. The Transfer feature is also very detailed and user friendly. This is a happy GUI for P2P, all point and click... Oh, and there are millions and millions of people on the system. You can get brand new stuff just as well as the Beatles, unlike most P2P programs. The program also has a built in Library feature that allows a windows like view of editable forlders and subfolders so you can arrange files however you want, create playlists for the Shareaza player, etc.. Wonderful, wonderful program.

BEST: 100% Free and no ads whatsoever!

[kestra]

Kazaa is nothing more than a large spyware program. You had to install some other software that tracked you in order to use the free version of Kazaa. And the Kazaa program wouldn't go willingly off of my computer when I would uninstall it.
I use Shareaza too. No spyware from what I can tell. I'm pretty happy with it.

[kiania]

I used to use Winmx about a year ago when I was on a network that wasn't blocked, and will probably go back to using it when I get back on a faster connection.
Seemed user friendly to me, and has the option to chat to people (blame it for getting me into rp, and also prodding me towards thresh)

[Dorain]

I've been using WinMX for a few years now with 0 complaints. Definitely not the flashiest of P2P programs, but it's Spyware/Adware free, it's freeware, and fairly simple to use. I also like to compliment it with MX Monitor to try to keep the 'leeches' away from my files. The guy's page from that link gives a hyperlink to the monitor program, plus they explain how to set up/use MX & MXM.

Also, I use Sysinternals TCPView free program to optimize my MX connection. This is a very very good free program to boot even if your not using it for WinMX. TCPView will show you detailed listings of all TCP and UDP endpoints on your system, including the local and remote addresses and state of TCP connections. I'll restart the WinMX connection if I don't like the IP TCPView shows. The connections & speed are alot better if you find a Comcast,RR Cable type server.

[tharun]

I use shareazza because its the best program I know of out there. It connects to (I believe) three different P2P networks, so you have a huge source to draw files from. Furthermore it doesn't contain any spyware or adware or any crap like that. It's free. It also acts as a bittorrent client but it acted up on files over a coupla gigabytes. So it's not a great bit torrent client.

-tharun

[ejda]

DC++ rules.
It's free and open source although it might take awhile to really get into it. But once you do it, you can pretty much download anything you want real fast.

[Kianier]

I use Ares. Seems to work great for me and the download time is really quick.