Limewire 2.02 vs 1.8c
 

When I first dl'ed 2.0 I was aghast at the crappy searches. I went back to 1.8 but I found I really didnt give 2.0 a fair shake. Yes, you will get fewer hits under 2.0, but the hits you will get are better for actually *GETTING* the file you are after. 2.0 seems to have taken network traffic related to searches and pared it down a bit...allowing on to use more bandwidth for transferring said files.

For example, it was common for me to have around 35% success rate in dl's in 1.8..but I got mega hits on every search. The problems was I could only get 35% of what i saw. Now with 2.0, i get maybe 40 % of the search results I used to after having the connection up for 10 minutes or so, but my download ration of successes has gone up into the maybe 3 out 4 succeed category, and those that do succeed come to me with 33 to 40K rates. ( I have a 384/128K dsl connection.) This compared with 1.8c where most download were jerky.....bouncing around all over the place.

2.0 requires you to have a bit more patience and you will have to do more searches than 1.8, but when you grab it, it's yours 75% of the time. I'll take bandwidth for files over bandwidth for searches any day.

Oh......and thanks to Limewire for the GREAT OS X support!!!!! Considering the market share we are lucky to have a X version at all. Hope these comments have helped the state of mind re the versions.

TW

While I appreciate LimeWire supporting OS X as well as the Mac platform, I can't buy into this line of thinking.

The current version of Limewire for OS X is major league INFERIOR to previous versions of Limewire and not even close to its PC brethern. If you don't believe me just try Kazaa on a PC. You get orders of magnitude more hits and virtually all of them work. If you want to compare gnutella clients to gnutella clients, try Grokster. I am running it on Virtual PC. It's ability to return great results compared to Limewire is without question. Again, if you don't believe me, try it. It is a slam dunk comparison.

I also can't buy into the line of logic that even though you get less hits they are more apt to be viable downloads. If you get no hits, it doesn't really matter about the quality. The quality of zero is still zero.

Secondly, if you do get lucky enough to get some search results, the ratio of good to bad does not seem to have improved to me.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have an axe to grind either way. I certainly enjoyed the convenience of using a Mac gnutella client while in the OS X environment, but I am not going to accept virtually non-existant search results when you can easily find the same stuff using another client.

Come on Limewire, eat your own dog food. If you do, you'll realize there is something wrong!

I agree that the number of viable downloads has not improved. I'm getting a fraction of the hits I used to and seeing no improvment in the quality of downloads. Let us have everything and then worry about what works and what doesn't.

I just tried to find some songs from the musical "Anything Goes" on Limewire 2.02 for OS X. This was done after Limewire had been on most of the day. I got zero (0) hits. I then tried ".sit". I got sixteen (16) hits. Wow.

I booted up Virtual PC 5.0 and s l o w l y started Grokster (its not bad once you get there). I imediately did a search for "Anything Goes". Instantly I had over 100 hits. I've already downloaded (as I type this) six of the eight songs I selected with the other two (2) queued to download. Eight out of eight! Grokster has a very functional, easy to use, browser interface and is rumored to be working on a Mac version. If they release a Mac version comparable to their PC version, look out Limewire!

Come on Limewire, stop wasting time taking features off the client so that we can't see how few hosts we are connected to, and get the search functionality up to the level of these other apps. You have a good interface and HAD a very functional piece of software. What were you thinking?

BTW, this latest version won't quit unless you force quit.
Was that on purpose???

Just downloaded 2.1.1.

Things are much better. Lots more hits. Still doesn't seem as good as the old days, but way better than 2.02. Will try it for a few days before making any more judgement.

Thanks Limewire for the continuing effort.