The last two days has been exciting in the eXeem arena with the release of both the official and lite beta client, after downloading both installers and making sure my computer would not melt I set out to learn about all the hype surrounding this new kid on the block.
So here we go, the results are in.
Let’s Get Started!
eXeem
GUI(identical to one another of course): The default is a nice silver and blue Windows Xp type skin with five tabs, Home, Transfers, New Files, Search and event log.
After clicking on New files and hitting refresh a list of newly published files is displayed with neat little icons labeling media formats. You can filter the results by pull down menu that lets you select media type. The search function lets you search for the specific files, its all pretty standard of most Kazaa clones.
User Friendly: Yes, a one armed monkey and a one eye’d invalid can use this program
Quality: O.k so this is where I will start to bitch (this is the same by the way for eXeem official) The network is already polluted, The two albums I grabbed were fine but the songs I grabbed displayed playback errors (i.e Fake?)
I grabbed an avi labeled “high quality” it was a movie released in the last year and a half on d.v.d and it was Divx quality all the way.
I cannot vouch for any vcd releases though as the speeds were not all that jaw dropping so I had decided to pass on that venture and this brings us to our next category.
Speed/Network: The network had 29,000 users connected with both clients for the time I connected and hitting refresh did not seem to make a difference (changing nodes), seeds were understandably sparse and selection was mediocre but already the in demand items are popping up.
Speeds are average with 60 K at most and 5.99 k at the least.
I found speeds were not consistent as one well seeded file was slow as molasses for some reason.
File publishing: Really easy, search for a directory or a file and hit publish after entering the info and description, the Pope can do this, it’s that easy.
Spyware?: Ad aware and MS anti spy ware only found one instance of the cydoor Ad ware on my system. If there is anything else installed it’s hidden.
The thoughts:
This is kinda creepy reminiscent of early Kazaa, quality is already an issue and will only get bigger as the spoofing firms publish more garbage, hashing is useless in preventing waste on the network and it’s no longer enough to download a file with the most seeds to ensure quality as the content is no longer moderated.
The lite version dispenses of Cydoor and other than that the clients are as you should expect, Identical.
The speed was tolerable but the network needs to be allot bigger to capture a good swarming effect for files and get BT flavored speeds. It remains to be seen on how stable the network is under heavy load though I am sure we shall soon find out.
While the ease of publishing was cool for the non technical the ease of publishing any file will play a roll in bogging down the network with fakes.
There have been posts that have claimed that the eXeem network has started to block eXeem lite clients, I could not verify this as both my Versions worked identical down to the tee (I installed and tested the lite version first if you are curious) There have been posts on Neighbour Slyck with registry fixes if you run into connection problems with lite though hitting new files and refresh usually works just fine.
This is a very important development as this means all clients ping a server somewhere for authorization to the network.
This means it’s NOT decentralized and brings in the ghost of network control which is bad from a legal stand point as it might mean they CAN control content.
I think the kazaa crowd who are still homeless will find a home here but for how long? I think that most BT enthusiasts in the end will stick with moderated indexing and classic BT as opposed to eXeem, though in the end time always tells.
I think at least from a conceptual stand point I can see the cool program they are aiming for but it is plagued by many OLD problems that you might wonder why if they knew about the weaknesses of the programs before it was developed didn’t they focus on fixing them?
I hope I have given you a picture that you can use to formulate your own opinion, now it’s up to the users to determine the success of eXeem.
So todays stress test results are,
eXeem lite: 5 out of 10 (no adware, user friendly but suspect quality)
eXeem official: 4 out of 10 (Cydoor, User friendly and again suspect quality)
Also check out either client at their respective homepages
Feel free to voice your opinion in our two exeem polls
Exeem homepage:Official
Exeem lite:Exeem lite
By: Bryan M. ~Lead Zp News Admin
