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Sunday, October 24, 2004

eDonkey Tops Kazaa
Illegal file-sharing services may make Bill's blood boil, but it looks like there's a new champ on the file sharing block - eDonkey/Overnet. According to a study by BayTSP, this past September, eDonkey averaged 2.54 million users while Kazaa did 2.48. That may be too close to call, since both networks are jammed with fakers, spoofs, record execs, and regulators, but one thing is clear, file sharing ain't going away anytime soon. Source: Newsfactor.

One word of caution, to avoid a pain in the ass if you choose to sample the Donkey, (couldn't resist) listen to what the users at Download.com are saying - the program is stuffed to the gills with spyware. As one user put it: "This is the worst download i have ever had the misfortune to have come across. This program is the most adware/ spyware laden piece of junk I have ever used. Download.com - what happened???????????????This should be banished from cyberspace forever!!! It certainly should have no place in the archives of download.com, who I and others know and trust for their reliable reviews and picks.(tsk, tsk, tsk...) It would be easier to bring back the broom of the wicked witch of the west than to get this program out of your system once it is installed. Holy computer crashes, batman..."

--User Comments and the Download if You Just Don't Care

# Permalink Posted at 9:31 AM 9 comments Email this Link

Comments on this Item:

I sent an angry email to Download.com (CNet) about the featuring "Cool Web Search" on their front page (as an ad, but it was directing to their site so people assume it's not bad). I'm really getting fed up with CNet for this kind of behavior. People rely on them to give advice and such, but a lot of their spyware-laden products don't even have warnings on them (some do though). It seems like CNet has been blinded by the advertisers money and can no longer see what's in the best interests of the consumer.

# posted by David 11:22 AM

The main eDonkey client out there, as far as I know, is actually called eMule.
It's a product of sourceforge.
Much, much, much better than eDonkey.

http://www.emule-project.net

# posted by Jesse 12:12 PM

I just wanted to agree Jesse's previous post about using the emule client on the edonkey network: the client is much better, and does not have adware/spyware embedded in it.

# posted by Trock 2:48 PM

So eMule is really ok? There has to be catch. My system never recovered from Kazaa.

# posted by Alice 6:12 PM

I've been using eMule for months.

The only problem I had with it was when an upgrade turned on the Kad support by default. Apparently the implimentation of Kad has issues with D-Link routers (or vice versa).

The system with eMule on it has not a single iota of malware in sight. I've even uninstalled it before without problems.

# posted by bkofford 6:26 PM

From everything I've heard, eMule is spyware/adware/malware free.

# posted by David 7:27 PM

ummmm......
if you uncheck the optional software during install edonkey doesn't embedded spyware...
the banner ads get a little agressive though, but a popup blocker has kept me from having trouble

# posted by Anonymous 5:29 AM

I use the donkey with no problems.
The ads are agressive, run a popup blocker.
I woudln't be surprised to find that the scathing reviews are mostly from either people that actually care that their p2p network is more popular so they're slamming the competition and content owners that are trying to disuade you with a "reefer madness" campaign of disinformation

# posted by Tom 5:33 AM

For unix users, check out mlDonkey: http://mldonkey.berlios.de/

It's written in the functional programming language 'ocaml', and its development is hosted on the GNU free software project site: http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/mldonkey/

If you want to verify that it is malware-free, read the source.

# posted by Anonymous 9:09 AM

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