Good software
1. File sharing software
I know LimeWire is all great and stuff, I know some of the people that wrote the program, but that’s not the program I’m going to recommend (no offense guys). The program that wins my heart over is Shareaza, the greatest thing since the knife (that subsequently was used to slice bread). While most P2P programs only connect to one network (LimeWire only connects to the Gnutella network), Shareaza is compatible with (and will simultaneously connect to) four different networks. Shareaza uses Gnutella, Gnutella2 (G2), eDonkey, and BitTorrent. One quick search will toss four of the most popular P2P protocols into action, giving you more results than anyone else can offer. Not only that, but the security of Shareaza is unbeatable: you can choose to block access to your shared files list (takes care of those pesky lawsuits) and filter known bad IP addresses (such as ones that flood results with bogus files to stop you from getting the ones you want). I’ve used about every P2P program around and nothing comes close … it’s free, clean, easy, safer, and (most importantly) open-source. Plus, it runs pretty well in Wine on *Nix!
Get it: shareaza.sourceforge.net
2. Media players
So now that you have all this great stuff, you probably want something great to play it all in. It’s tough to say which MP deserves to be called the best, but it’s pretty easy to say which ones don’t even deserve to be called software. The worst media players, by far, that I’ve ever had the dissatisfaction of using would have to be Windows Media Player and Musicmatch Jukebox. WMP is just plain crap … it has absolutely nothing anyone would ever want, and lacks everything anyone would ever need. Jukebox isn’t nearly as bad, but it still isn’t something I would use on purpose; I even “upgraded” to Jukebox Plus to see if that was any better — nope. iTunes is far from anything to brag about, too. If you want a gargantuan program with a ridiculously large footprint then go for it, but there are programs that have the same features (and then some) that are much more deserving.
For *Nix systems, my favorite media player is certainly Amarok. It has a very clean interface, you can set it to use your own database if you wish (making it really fast), and some pretty cool features (e.g., built-in last.fm support, mobile device programming).
Get it: amarok.kde.org
The only (Windows) media player that I would recommend is Winamp; it has everything you would expect in a good media player and more. It’s fast, doesn’t have a huge footprint, supports alpha blending (opacity) and has an advanced media library. Not only that, but it also has an iPod plug-in that lets you synchronize your playlist with your iPod — now you don’t even have to install iTunes =).
Get it: www.winamp.com
