Bearshare Review

Bearshare is one the most reliable free file-sharing program available. It uses the Gnutella network and has a very large scale community.

BearShare behaves quite nicely with the setup for the sometimes inconsistent Gnutella network (because there is no central server listing all the users). All the user options are placed near the top of the program with tabs sorting out your options. Bearshare focuses on getting the wanted files and not on a very elaborate design so its interface is rather simplistic.

Bearshare includes a family filter that can be activated by parents and also allows you to put up a visual content filter which hides most movies, images, and other.

Connecting can sometime be a problem but once you start downloading files, speed should be a pleasant surprise. The program puts out a very easy to read download speed bar that is green; if you get a whole green bar, it means you should expect a high speed on your download; if the bar is only partially green, the speed of your downloads speeds may be slower.

On the upside Bearshare comes with good features, good speed and the ability to find some files that you can’t find with other p2p clients. In the host section, while connecting to various networksworldwide, the country’s flag will be displayed as an icon if it’s available.

On the downside this p2p client does contain adware which can indeed be very irritating and dangerous to have on your PC. Another annoying fact is that after setting the option to close BearShare when clicking the big X, you keep on getting asked if you want to minimize it to tray whenever closing.