LimeWire Review

limewire-reviewUPDATE: December 2012

Unfortunately, LimeWire had stopped offering its services. The injunction can be seen here.

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From its debut as a post-Napster clone to the moment it became identified with the leading image of Gnutella client, LimeWire has established itself as one of the top file-sharing programs in the world. The 4.0 series continue the ante bringing some new features into play, an efficient interface, and an overall improved performance.

LimeWire is at this time one of the best file sharing programs createad; currently you can get it in two versions, LimeWire and LimeWire Pro. The second has an improved searching ability. The LimeWire firewall to firewall ability makes it very adaptable. If you find yourself behind a weird router firewall, on a college LAN or in some other odd location, LimeWire will always have troble connecting. Its GUI could be better but it is, however, skinnable. For more convenience and a more precise search, LimeWire allows you to choose you fields for title, artist, album, track number, genre, year, length and bitrate.

LimeWire is written in Java thus supporting Windows, Mac and Linux. The disadvantage to this would be that it requires above average system resources on all OS’s. Since it is a Gnutella only client, LimeWire connection reaches approximately 2 million other people. This means that as a LimeWire user you move in a library the same size as FastTrack and 2/3rds of the ED2K library.

limewire-screenshot-small.jpglimewire-v4.17.3-small.jpgIt’s noteworthy that the skins of this p2p client are pretty fancy, but what really gets your attention is the Direct Connect feature which allows you to directly tap into a particular IP address (for a quick exchange of files). Further more, the ‘What’s new’ feature right next to the Direct Connect makes a great handy addition. It enables you to explore all the latest files that have been acquired by the Gnutella network.

limewire-upgrade2.jpg The upside – it offers nearly everything you demand from a P2P Gnutella client. It has one of the biggest user communities out there, a huge amount of files which almost certainly includes what you want; a basic interface havingfun features like ‘What’s New’ and favorite Freeloader option.

The downside – being Java it might slow you down a bit, so the longer you leave it on, the more memory it’ll consume.The Adult filter is not very accurate and allows many files to find their way in even when it’s activated.

DOWNLOAD YOUR FILES 10X FASTER THAN BEFORE VIA USENET.NL