We've just released the LimeWire 3.0.1 Beta, including many new features, improvements, and bug fixes. This version uses compression on all Gnutella connections to decrease bandwidth use and uses a more intelligent dynamic searching algorithm to get you more results more quickly than previous versions. We also make more intelligent use of "IP multicast" technology to quickly and efficiently search local LANs of Ultrapeers when performing your search.

LimeWire 3.0.1 also improves download success rates and improves uploads, all while decreasing the CPU, memory, and bandwidth requirements on your machine -- LimeWire 3.0.1 is more efficient and won't consume as many system resources even as it improves search and download performance.

Finally, LimeWire 3.0.1 adds the ability to change the appearance of the application by applying different themes, and you can change the theme without restarting the application. We will soon be releasing many new themes on our web site, and we'll also show you how to easily create your own themes that you can then share using LimeWire.

The free beta installers are available at:

http://www.limewire.com/index.jsp/download_beta

If you are a pro user, the pro version is available from a link on your pro download page.

We sincerely hope everyone likes the new version, and thanks in advance to everyone for their help testing the beta.

-LimeWire Team

Thanks for the changelog and congrats.
Installation is the same ( still the odd warning about desktop present/not present).
Works well here on OSX as a leaf so far. Connections and searches are quick, downloads smooth, but uploads still stutter and end up interrupted. Quick run as an UP, and ML Donkey connected briefly as a leaf! Will have to disable UP again though--moments when all connections are still being lost, LW recovers, but eventually crashes (I'll send it in). Haven't tried LAN speeds and connections.

Hard to get used to the old Windows style themes, but it's interesting. The stats are even better, especially for uploads. Looks like CPU is down.

Cheers

The right-click menus work better on the search tabs! Before, it was hit-or-miss whether they'd respond. I'm also running Java 1.4.2-beta (for the past several days with LW 2.9.11) but I think the improvement is only now with LW 3.

if you're running 1.4.2 on windows XP, you might like the windows theme.

so...when will we be able to download themes?

Good question! What about the other 10 themes that are in the CVS??? Why don't you put those on the LimeWire.com website?

We're coming out with a completely redesigned web site for 3.0, and we'll make that live as soon as 3.0 is released from beta. That site will have all of the themes available for download, and it will also have a page describing in detail how to create your own themes.

We chose not to bundle all of the themes with the application primarily because they're pretty big, and we didn't want to force users to download them all.

Thanks.

The beta seems to fix the bug I had wherer LW 2.9.11 would randomly and seemingly without purpose quit after a period of time, short or long. Sweet. That's important, and it's been fixed. I thank you.

Interface issues: The numer of hosts columm (sp) is gone from the connections list. I don't know about everyone else, but I always liked seeing how many people were connected. Another little quirky issue. Maybe it's just me, but shouldn't the next person queued be numer one, not number zero? It's not important, just a little thing bugging me.

Every graph on the advanced statistics regarding message size in kilobytes is still really off. The maximum value of the y axis on the graph really shouldn't be more than 50, but it's at 300! I mean, my max is usually ~20, averaging about ~8 running as UP. Therefore, the maximum y value on the graph should be a bit above the average maximum kilo value, because as it is now, it's a bit difficult to read. And the white and yellow graphs are not readable on the default interface. Perhaps you should use dark colors on the advanced statistics lines and not allow a theme to alter the view of the advanced statistics box.

Thanks for your feedback, Blackbird. Regarding the number of hosts column, we stopped recording that for each connection simply because it was using a lot of memory, and is a feature that most users are not concerned with. It was also a *very* innaccurate statistic that didn't mean much -- it did represent the number of people that host was connected to, but rather how many hosts had been recorded in "pongs" from that connection. The upshot is that this number reflected more how long that host had been up than it did anything regarding true, useful properties about that host.

On the graph issue, I'm going to finally fix that soon, as it is annoying. Thanks for bringing it up, though -- it should be fixed in our next version.

Thanks everyone -- keep the suggestions coming if you've got 'em!

Adam,

first of all, thanks for posting in the forum. i know you guys are busy and I really appreciate the progress limewire has made, but it is reassuring if some of the limewire team drop a note in the forum every now and then.

i haven't run 3.0.1 long enough yet for anything to unusual to occur. all seems to run well. thanks!

is the faq going to be updated with the new website? some recent changes are not mentioned in the current one, particularly the absence of automated requeries.

also: whoever works on the faq should take a look at the forum to see what the most frequent problems are. there's nothing more frustrating for a newbie than to try to be a good citizen, read the whole faq, and still find no solution to the problem.

thanks again!