Which program would you recommend??

[mnm744]

Hello,

I recently got an mp3 player and would like to start downloading music. I am really concerned about viruses and such, but I would assume since I currently have Nroton and a firewall installed on my computer, that I should be okay. So, my question is which music downloading program would you recommend? I am willing to pay some sort of fee for the service, but not per song. I might also want to download dvd movies in the future.
Thanks for your help!

[SanDiegoKid]

If you like bit torrent, you can try http://oink.me.uk/
Soulseek is another great program to find music, and it's usually organized by full albums. http://www.slsknet.org/

I hear if you want to use a fee service, www.allofmp3.com is the way to go. Personally, I wouldn't know.

[tsafa1]

If you have virus protection you are safe. Norton is very good. Just make sure you update the virus definitions. When the free period runs out pay the $20 (may be more now) for definition updates. Mp3's are typicaly 5 mb, that size is too large for a virus. You are more likly to hit on a virus downloading pictures, but no problem with virus protection.

On the firewall make sure you open the port numbers required by whatever p2p program you use or it won't work right. I personly don't use firewall. Firewall is to stop someone from tryin to hack into your computer. This is not likly unless you are a big institutution with enemies.

As far as what p2p program is good for mp3's? realisticaly they are all good. Mp3's are small enought to spread fast. If you download a fake, delete and try again, no big deal. As you read through the forums you will learn all the popular issues surounding mp3's and downloading.

You should also download and install spyware protection. Ad-aware is a good one. Over tine you will collect data miners that you should remove. These collect information about websites you visit and forward it to servers for statistics gathering purposes. It uses up your cpu power and bandwith without your permision.

You should probably start with a simple p2p program and advance from there. One that fits the easy catagory is kazaa-light. But it may be hard to get. The other almost as easy, is Limewire, you need to install Java too for it to work. Not a bad idea since you will most liklyy need java for other programs too. Once you understand the basics of p2p you can go up one level and try e-donkey or overnet. These are more popular for movie downloading. You should over time try all the popular programs, just learn about them first.

[SanDiegoKid]

Norton is very good.

You know 9 times out of 10 I can force myself to just walk away from the keyboard when I see this.

It's not very good. It's not very good at all. People assume it is because it USED to be, and it's a big name. If you go to a huge computer store and ask about an anti virus they will more than likely sell you Norton.

While there are several options, F-protect, F-Secure, Kaspersky are more system-friendly than Norton, and actually catch viruses.
Kaspersky updates their defenitions every 3 hours... Norton? Umm.. well it depends but you can sometimes measure it in weeks.

Anyway, on the original topic:

I forgot to mention that USENET is great for music files. You have to take what's there, but it's fast, secure, and 99.9% of the time there are no fakes.

[DrumsChief]

I'm looking for a new MP3 file-sharing program, and stumbled across the Zeropaid site hoping to hear from other users much more experienced in the file-sharing dept. The only one I've tried so far has been Kazaa-lite (free) but the pop-ups and spyware slowed my on-line speed to a crawl. I would not recommend their free version to anyone. I don't really download a large enough number of files to justify a hefty monthly fee, so I'm back to square one on this particular project.

[commander2001]

i recommend irc it is awsome if u know how to use it

[Crazy Horse]

For 1st time downloaders that really don't know their way around yet I recommend Ares. It is very simple to use. The queues are not out of hand ...yet... and neither are the fake files or viruses. You can find different file types (mp3, movies, etc). Another simple program (mp3's only) and spyware/adware free is Piolet. You will have problems connecting if your using a router - but that's easy to fix also.