Specifications
chines accessing our client, we
couldn’t get correct originating
IP addresses. But whether this
real-time privacy would do
much good in the face of a peer
list obtained with a legal injunc-
tion is another question.
If you’ve ever used a popular
file-sharing app, Blubster will
feel familiar. An Advanced icon
lets you narrow a search by qual-
ity or other criteria, and search
results appear with user and
quality data in a list. Results take
a few seconds to appear, but they
appear in droves.
Whether you select one file
or dozens, the uncluttered inter-
face gets you to the transfer sta-
tus with a quick click. From this
transfer section, you can right-
click to look for more sources
for particular files, and these
multisource
UDP downloads
seem blazingly fast. Should you
need to shut down, you can re-
sume downloads later.
As impressive as the Blubster
network’s music offerings are,
and despite its efforts at real-
time privacy, we can’t whole-
heartedly recommend the free-
ware client. There’s something
almost nauseating about the
Gator ad system it saddles you
with. Even uninstalling Blubster
won’t get rid of all the tendrils
Gator creates. We had to use anti-
spyware tools to do that.
We feel more comfortable
recommending the alternative
versions of the client that access
the network without adware.
They still present the same fire-
wall hurdles, but if you choose to
load either Clean Blubster 2.5 or
Piolet 1.05, you can add a star to
our rating.
Blubster 2.5
Adware-supported. Optisoft,
www.blubster.com.
llmmm
in a particular channel, or you
can browse file lists from users.
Those in trade mode (or traders)
are limited to channels and can’t
use the global File Server search.
Also, traders have to adhere
to a system of download and up-
load credits and can search only
for files from other traders. The
upside is that trader connec-
tions seemed (in our experi-
ence, at least) faster and more
reliable. And the more you give
away (you can set the client to
do this unattended), the more
credits you earn toward stable
downloads.
Another plus: The Filetopia
user base seems composed of
savvier folks who weed out poor-
quality or bogus files. But there is
room for improvement. Current-
ly, Filetopia 3.04 is just a little
more effective than searching
IRC
and Usenet newsgroups, and
not always as anonymous.
Filetopia 3.04
Price: Free. Filetopia Inc.,
www.filetopia.com.
lllmm
lllll EXCELLENT
llllm VERY GOOD
lllmm GOOD
llmmm FAIR
lmmmm POOR
WHAT THE RATINGS MEAN
www.pcmag.com/firstlooks
44 WebSphere Commerce
Professional Edition 5.5
46 InBoxer
46 AlienCamel 1.0
40 Microsoft Windows Powered PCS
Phone SH-G1000 by Hitachi
42 Dell Latitude X300
42 HP Compaq Business Notebook
nc4000
Filetopia 3.04
Offering diversity of content in
a potentially secure environ-
ment, Filetopia 3.04 lets you ac-
cess and share audio, video,
documents,
CD images—any-
thing really—without pesky ad-
ware or spyware. You’ll typical-
ly find fewer than 4,000 users
connected at a time, though,
perhaps due to the difficult
learning curve.
But at least those users are all
sharing, thanks to the client’s
strict two-way bandwidth rules:
You can download only up to
double the rate at which you
let others take from you.
If you’re not putting in,
you can’t take out.
Filetopia encrypts
all client-to-client
communications
using your choice
of nine symmetric
ciphers (Rijndael by
default). This doesn’t pre-
vent someone with network-
analysis tools from picking up
your IP address, though, so File-
topia also employs bouncers. A
bouncer is a machine running a
program that forwards your
connection to other machines,
providing snoops with only the
bouncer’s
IP address, not yours.
But stability is not so reliable
with bouncers, especially when
downloading large files, which
may lead users to turn off
bouncers—and a bouncer-free
Filetopia somewhat defeats the
purpose of switching from a ser-
vice like Kazaa. Also, if you have
a firewall, you cannot download
from users with firewalls.
Filetopia lets you run in either
free-share mode or trade mode.
In free-share mode, your ma-
chine acts as a traditional
P
2
P
client shar-
ing with
other free-
share users.
Searches hap-
pen in a window
called File Server,
which also lists results.
Depending on the network
settings on both ends and
whether there is a bouncer, you
may or may not succeed in mak-
ing a connection to a file.
Should a download break down
or fail to start, the file becomes
part of a Watch List so that File-
topia can keep trying to estab-
lish a link to the file. Be pre-
pared to use your Watch List tab
a lot, unfortunately—especially
if you go through a bouncer. We
experienced numerous missed
connections.
Both free-share and trade
mode users can enter and use
channels, which are like themed
IRC channels with file transfer
enabled. You can use the search
dialog to query only those users
www.pcmag.com SEPTEMBER 16, 2003 PC MAGAZINE
31
There is a
learning curve to get
going, but Filetopia offers
users the ability to search
globally for files or exchange
them in themed
channels.