According to epinions, Napster is recommended 96% of the time. That's for a good reason everyone! I don't think there's anything bad you can say about it. As far as i know, it's one of a kind. (Or at least similar products that have come before were buggy and weren't successful.) Ever try downloading mp3's off the web? It's an absolute nightmare. Hours and hours are sucked away as you hit page after page of dead links. You're led around in a circle quite a bit too, and MISlead to "buy this CD" pages as well. We're not looking to buy G*&d%*&$!. Why do they think we're looking for mp3's? And I didn't get alladvantage until last month, so that wasn't even an incentive to search the web. What do we want? We want the mp3's we're looking for without a lot of hassle.

If you like downloading mp3's just to have on your computer or if you're looking to burn them on a CDs, Napster is the way to go. I'm not going to comment on the illegality of the matter, because come on, when are the executives ever going to learn? The power of the mp3 is just too much for them to handle.

The way Napster Works: It's really simple. Users choose a screen name and password to enter the Napster servers; once there, you're basically networked with other Napster users. Song files are searchable through an engine, (I've found that it doesn't really matter whether you seach under Title or Artist, the search engine pulls everything up with the keywords you give it.), and you can choose which songs to download from other users' PCs even as people are downloading from you. (When another user is downloading from your PC, the transfer will show up in your Upload section.)

A WARNING from, "Sailing Around the Letter of the Law," an article in USA Today by Bruce Haring: "Napster has risks. By opening their hard drives, users could have other data taken or viruses inserted."

Okay, sure, there are risks. You're involved in a highly covert pirating operation, of course, there will be risks. And sometimes you'll even get transfer errors!, however, these minor inconveniences are nothing in comparison to trying to find mp3's on the web. Once in a while i'll have trouble connecting, but it's not often enough to detract from the fact that Napster must be a product of divine inspiration.

I really like that it's a music community of sorts. As long as you're connected to the server, you're mp3's are being shared with all Napster users. You don't have to put your mp3's in a particular place either, Napster simply scans you're hard drive for mp3 files and pulls them into your library to be shared with others. You can put users on your "Hot List" if you like their taste in music, and Napster will tell you when they're online and available to download from.

Also, if you get kicked off because your internet connection times out or for any other reason, all you have to do is reconnect to the Napster server and click "Resume." This won't work all of the time, but when it does work, it's a really nice option.

Napster upgraded the system so that you can designate the number of search returns. It used to be that you couldn't get anymore than 100 returns, but that's no longer the case. You can also define the search returns in terms of connection speed. There are a lot of users that are connected by Cable, DSL, T1, T3 and ISDN. If you stick to users at these speeds (Or lower connections with low Ping rates), and only download 3 or 4 at a time (The default is three, and the status of anymore than three will read, "Queued," unless you change the number of simultaneous downloads in preferences), the average download time is about 30 to 40 minutes.

All in all Napster is a really, really cool product. And it's free! No more dead links, no more links to amazon.com, and no more accidently ending up in a maze of porn sites. (If you're going to get lost in a maze of porn, you may as well do it to kill time while downloading some songs from Napster, right?) Just remember, Napster may not be around for long (lawsuits and all), so take full advantage while you can. If you don't, you'll be kicking yourself while waiting in line at the CD store.



Recommended: Yes