Paul WilliamsUpdates usually greatly improve thing, but not for WinMX, a file-sharing program that used to be one of the best in my mind.
I used to use WinMX like crazy to download music because I trusted it the most and got files so fast using it. I had even tried another program called Kazaa, but at the time Kazaa just wasn’t as good as WinMX. I categorize file-sharing programs into three categories: WinMX, Kazaa, and any other program. WinMX and Kazaa are the two most popular programs right now. A pole taken at Cabrini showed Kazaa to be the most popular used program right now.
WinMX had their newest update, and I was ready for the new and improved version. Well to my disappointment this may have been new, but it definitely wasn’t improved. The design while it’s connecting to the Internet looks like it’s for little kids. It’s almost like a traffic light to tell you when to go. They now have it set so that if more than one person have the same file, you can download it from both of them at the same time for faster speed. With the old WinMX, on a T1 connection I was getting songs at about 80-100 k/second and with the new WinMX they have been downloading at about 10-40 k/second so it has been taking so much longer. Kazaa has that same feature with taking it from more than one computer except that it works!
Another minor disappointment that I had was the browsing feature. With the older WinMX, if you were downloading from someone at a very fast speed you could browse to see what other songs they were sharing, and if there were more songs that you liked, you could also get them fast. With the new WinMX, you can’t browse at all. My guess for the reason of this is because you can now get a file from more than one user at a time, and it is not possible to browse both computers at once.
One final gripe about WinMX: in the older version, you would usually try and download a few at the same time and then you could just clear those that didn’t work, and just download the one that was going the fastest. With the “new and improved updated version” of WinMX it saves everything on your computer. Whether it didn’t even start downloading or not, it saves it on your computer. Usually when you update something, it is updated to make it better. The majority of those that voted Kazaa as the best said they used to use WinMX until the new version came out. With Kazaa you can download files much faster, and there are also more variety with the newest version.
