LimeWire: The World's Fastest P2P File-Sharing Application
Limewire is no longer available, due to a court-ordered injunction requiring it to cease all operations. LimeWire is a very popular peer to peer file-sharing application. Users of the latest release will notice the radical redesign, bringing it aesthetically up to date.
Like Vuze before it, LimeWire appears to be encouraging legal downloads with the LimeWire Store. The library is so far a little limited compared to competitor download stores, but we expect this will expand.
Otherwise, it's business as usual on LimeWire, but with a much simplified and cleaner interface. Because it's a new release, there are still some bugs, but the basic file-sharing functions as well as ever. The new design makes scanning your search results much easier, and downloading files is totally intuitive.
The built-in player is still unintrusive and useful for checking audio and video files, but no more. LimeWire goes out of its way to check you are aware of the legal implications of illegal file-sharing, on installation you have to agree not to infringe copyright, and if you download a file for which LimeWire can't find a license you will be warned and can stop or continue at your discretion.
The Friends function has been much improved. You can sign in with your Gmail, Jabber, or LiveJournal accounts, and share files between any of your friends there who are also on LimeWire. This is much easier than tapping out IP addresses, and if enough of your friends use LimeWire, it could become a great community sharing tool.
LimeWire searches remain within the P2P network, but you can open torrent files with it, and it functions very well as a torrent download client. This is not the most advertised feature of LimeWire, which may be a way of keeping legal challenges at bay, but it's a shame that you can't search for torrents within the program.
The official release of LimeWire 5.0 makes for a much improved P2P experience.
