What are things like these days in the p2p universe?

December 10, 2004 11:20 AM

What are things like these days in the p2p universe? I've been using BitTorrent exclusively for a while but friends and family have asked for my help with p2p but BitTorrent is overkill for the small files (songs, ringtones, etc) they're looking for. Also, BitTorrent has no search facilities which they'll need. What programs are out there? How spyware-ridden are they? How corrupted with bogus files? And, are there any sites you'd recommend to keep up-to-date with p2p?
posted by TimeFactor to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

Soulseek is good and so far bug and trojan and worm and spam free, in my experience.
posted by Rumple at 11:40 AM on December 10, 2004

I'm part of a private waste community. If you can find one, I think that's one of the better solutions.
posted by SpecialK at 11:51 AM on December 10, 2004

Zeropaid is probably the best site for keeping up with p2p.

I use Soulseek, but I also like Shareaza. Besides connecting to eDonkey, Gnutella and Gnutella2, Shareaza can also act as a BitTorrent client.
posted by box at 11:56 AM on December 10, 2004

Soulseek is excellent, but only really for electronic music in my experience.

Waste is pretty good if you can find a community. DC++ is similar and seems promising, although I've only been dabbling with it for a little while.
posted by neckro23 at 12:52 PM on December 10, 2004

Can someone provide a link or explanation of this waste?

OnPreview: Nevermind, I'll just google it. This better have to do with Lot 49........
posted by hughbot at 12:54 PM on December 10, 2004

tristero might get pissed.
posted by bshort at 1:21 PM on December 10, 2004

I keep ACQ (Acquisition) around, for things I can't find torrents for.

BitTorrent is overkill for the small files (songs, ringtones, etc) they're looking for. Also, BitTorrent has no search facilities which they'll need.

But I don't find either of these premises true. You can search most torrent sites. Try Yotoshi. And the BT architecture can't be beat for reliability and speed, whether the files are small or large.
posted by scarabic at 1:37 PM on December 10, 2004

Sioulseek has a lot of folk and blues as well. Not so good for pop music, or classical for that matter.
posted by Rumple at 2:03 PM on December 10, 2004

Soulseek pisses me off. Everybody's still encoding at 128kbps like it's 1996. I use it occasionally for single songs, but I still do better with eMule. It just requires patience, and is a little finicky about porting.
posted by drpynchon at 2:10 PM on December 10, 2004

I use a couple, BT being the biggest. In terms of searching on BT there are a few 'search engines' for this p2p. Bitoogle aka Yatoshi, Isohunt and forums like Filesoup are good places to keep up-to-date on lastest BT happenings.

WinMx is another good p2p application. As is some of the up-and-commers like Ares.
posted by squeak at 3:52 PM on December 10, 2004

Response by poster: Thanks for all the info and links. It gives me a jumping off point for further research.

Nobody has to sell me on BitTorrent. I love it and use it for "legitimate" purposes like downloading distros as well, for which it's been a god-send. When I said no search facility I mean within the clients themselves but I'll look into the web-based search engines and newer BT clients (I still use an ancient one). And saying it is overkill for small files isn't really accurate. I guess I meant that it's not what BT does best.

Thanks again.
posted by TimeFactor at 8:19 PM on December 10, 2004

I'm going to be checking out all these recommendations and I appreciate everyone's posts... but I have to ask: What about the old or less popular stuff? If I'm listening to the radio and hear some third rate song from the eighties that makes me all nostalgic and I decide I need a copy, where should I go looking for it? Or how about a Cannes also-ran film from five or ten years ago? Most of the bit torrent sites I've seen concentrate on the new and most popular stuff (for pretty obvious reasons). Kazzaa and Shareazza seem to me to be rather spotty. Newsgroups really seem to have the widest variety, but (a) files come and go pretty quickly and (b) my isp caps my download speed on usenet at 15 KB/sec. There's irc as well, but that well also seems rather shallow these days. So... any suggestions?
posted by Clay201 at 1:24 AM on December 11, 2004

Clay201 try WinMx and OpenNap. I've had a lot of success there for older, hard to find, obscure music. Have two options, get WinMx and run OpenNap from it or get a separate OpenNap application (search zeropaid.com for applications). In the end it will depend on the OpenNap server you access, some despise WinMx and will block WinMx users, others don't care.
posted by squeak at 3:44 AM on December 11, 2004

For one hit wonders of any decade, I find that there are tons of collections on bittorrent--european collections of top hits of the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc, and those Time/Life and Billboard Top 100 hits of each year. A little googling tells you what songs are on what volume. I've gotten just what i wanted from those (a lot of songs that were obscure here were top 40 hits elsewhere)
posted by amberglow at 9:59 AM on December 11, 2004