Free Software

 

Foreword

So you want some free software, huh? Well, there's plenty of it around these days. There's always the actual freeware programs that have always been available. There's also demos of loads of full price programs that you can download and then find a crack for, though you never know whether the crack actually breaks part of the program. These days P2P is all the rage. This can be be a useful source of software, but you are dependant on the other machine being available and the connection speed is often cripplingly slow. A new form of P2P called Bit Torrents is now the fad which can achieve much higher download speeds, but again you are dependant on other people to download the software. It is unfortunately human nature to take but not give back as much if anything at all. So what is left? Well, in my opinion, the best way of getting what you want is Usenet, or newsgroups. There is no dependancy on other people, the speed is as fast as your internet connection and the news server that you use, and the choice of software is mind boggling! Now, I'm no expert on everything, especially the nuts and bolts of how it all works, but I know enough about newsgroups now to get anything that I want usually when I want. So let's get started! For completeness, I'll give some more details about P2P and the rest, as I still use them occasionally.

 

Evaluation versions

 

Many companies make a time or feature limited version of their product available for download, obviously to impress the customer in the hope that they will buy it after trying it. Consequently, there are lots of web sites around where you can download 'cracks' or serial numbers that remove the time or feature limit so that the software becomes fully functional. This is not a bad way of going about it, but you can run into problems. The crack can sometimes 'break' other features of the software or it can become unstable, crashing frequently. This is obviously not so much of a problem when you are just entering a serial number. Also, the web sites that you download the cracks from are renowned for having pop-up windows galore which try to persuade you to install all kinds of crap on your PC. A good pop-up blocker is a must if you try this. Not only this, a lot of the files you can can download from these places are infected with viruses, (so keep your definitions up-to-date!)

So on the whole, demo versions can be a good way of getting what you want, but there are risks.

 

Rating: 7 out of 10

 

P2P

 

P2P, or Peer-to-Peer is probably the most popular way of downloading software around these days. It all really kicked off with the original Napster and MP3s and has now spread, with many different clients available. When Napster was shut down, Kazaa became king and is is still just about the most popular client. You basically install the client software on your PC, pick a folder on your hard drive which acts as your shared folder, and you can search all the other PC's shared folders that are currently connected on the system and try to download what you want. There are, however, a number of drawbacks. To start with the download speed is often poor. If you are trying to download something from a PC that is connected to the network via a slow link it is going to take for ever to download. Sure, you can filter out slow links in the client software, but you will be lucky to find something that will download fast and that you will not have to wait ages in a queue to get. Also, the Kazaa program installs spyware on your PC which is a no-no. A new hacked version of Kazaa came out called Kazaa Lite which contains no spyware, so if you are going to try this use that version. There are numerous other clients around too; WinMX, iMesh, Grokster, eDonkey, eMule, Overnet, Shareaza, Gnucleus, XoloX, LimeWire, BearShare and Morpheus are most of the ones I know of. They all have the same major drawbacks though, the fact that you are dependant on other machines being connected to the network, and the usually slow download speeds. A new P2P client is currently all the rage, called Bit Torrent. This is a P2P system, but much higher download speeds can be achieved due to the management of the connections. Again though, you are relying on others to 'seed' or share back the software that they have downloaded, which can be a frustrating experience if not many people do. So in summary, I would say that P2P can be useful if you are looking for something hard to get that is not too big in size, but it's not something I would use as my main tool.

 

Rating: 6 out of 10

 

Newsgroups

 

So we come to newsgroups. These have been around for donkey's years, even before the explosion of the World Wide Web. They are similar to a bulletin board where you will post a message for others to read. A server will hold all the messages posted and the users would connect to that server to read them. In the beginning they were just used for posting text messages, but eventually people realised that you could convert a binary file to text, post it on a news server, and other people could then download this and convert it back to binary. In fact, I still use newsgroups a lot just for the text messages. You can guarantee that if you have a question you can't answer and post it the relevant newsgroup, the answer will be forthcoming in no time at all. When it comes to binary files, downloading what you want can be a bit daunting at first – it was for me! But get the right client software, get some good advice and you will get the hang of it in no time at all!

 

The Basics

Firstly, if you want to download a shed load of stuff, sling out that 56k modem and get yourself hooked up to broadband. It's not that expensive these days and is a must really. Secondly, you get what you pay for. Most Internet Service Providers will have a news server available for their customers to use for free, but a lot of them won't let you download binaries of a certain kind or even carry those newsgroups (after all, it is ILLEGAL you know!) If they do have the binary newsgroups, you can bet your bottom dollar that a lot of posts will be incomplete (not all the files made it through), which can be very frustrating. No, if you are serious about downloading, then get yourself a paid news server. There are lots of them around and offer packages to suit. I saw one the other day offering unlimited downloads for about £8 per month. That's not much to pay, and you will have hardly any incomplete files, and there will also be a good retention (the length of time the news server carries the posts for before they are deleted). So, now you've got your fast connection and your decent news server, the next thing is to get yourself a good news reader. This is the program that will re-code the files into binary onto your PC. I used to swear by Agent as it is quite user friendly, handles text only post as well as binaries, and they also do a cut down free version which you can't complain at. The full version has extra features enabled and also has an e-mail client if you need one (I don't). However, it is such a good program I actually bought the most recent version because I used it so much (like you should do with ALL the software you use!!! ;))

Recently though, I tried out a new program on the recommendation of a friend, and I haven't looked back since. The program I now use is called Newsbin and is a tremendous bit of kit if you are heavily into downloading binaries, although it doesn't cater for your text-only newsgroups, so I keep Agent handy for that. If you like Newsbin, by the way, please buy it (like I did!) because a) that's what you're supposed to do and b) most of the cracks for it break the program in some way ;)

 

The more advanced stuff

 

OK, a bit more general theory here. Say you have a 500 MB file that you want post on to a newsgroup, what do you do? Well first of all you have to split that file up into more manageable chunks. Why? Well, if you spend a few hours downloading a very large file and your internet connection goes, you have to start again from the beginning which is a royal pain in the arse. If, however, you split the file into chunks of say 15 MB, if your connection goes down then you only lose the one 15 meg file, you've got all the rest you downloaded before. So how do you split it up? Most posts these days are compressed and split up with Winrar. Winzip is still used a lot but Winrar is king when it comes to binaries. Winrar splits the file up into user defined chunks with the file extensions .rar, .r00, .r01, .r02, .r03, etc. These are then posted on to the newsgroup with a descriptive message and are usually accompanied by a .nfo file (a text file with the full details of the post).

 

The next steps

 

So, now you've installed your news reader and you've entered the details of your news server, what next? Well, the next step is to download a list of all the newsgroups that are carried on the server (takes a minute or two) and then it is time to pick a group to see what treasures are in store! Here a few of the more popular ones: alt.binaries.multimedia, alt.binaries.vcdz, alt.binaries.cd.image, alt.binaries.svcd, alt.binaries.cd.image.clonecd, alt.binaries.movies.divx, alt.binaries.movies, alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.complete_CD, alt.binaries.cbts, alt.binaries.mpeg.video.music. The next thing to do is to download all the headers for the group – this is a list of all the posts (not the binary bits, just the subject lines) so you can see what people are offering. This can take a while if there are a lot of posts (but I will show you a way of getting round this in a mo). When you have them all, sort the posts by subject and have a browse. When you've found something you want it's just a matter of marking the messages for download and hitting the download button. Obviously, the faster your connection the quicker you will download your files, so go for the fastest connection you can afford. When they've downloaded, you will have a bunch of files on your hard drive, probably in .rar format. Then it's just a matter of re-combining the files into the one big file (or whatever its original state was) and then burning the files to a CD or dvd or whatever.

 

Par for the course

Recently, a new way of posting hit the scene – par files. In the past, if you were missing one or two bits from the whole post (incomplete files, say) you would ask for someone to re-post the bits you wanted. Obviously, if lots of people wanted different bits, this would become messy, with duplicate requests being posted and wasting bandwidth and time. So someone came up with a way of posting par or parity files along with the original post. These files can be used to recover missing parts, no matter which part you were missing. If you are familiar with RAID 5 arrays in servers you will get the drift a bit quicker). This obviously cut down tremendously on requests for re-posts and made things a whole lot simpler.

No more headers!

A little while ago I mentioned that I now use Newsbin as my news reader. The main reason for me switching over from Agent was for something called NZB files. Let me explain. Nowadays, there are newsgroup index web sites. These sites keep a record of all the binary files posted on all the newsgroups and offer them in a searchable list, which is a godsend to find what you are looking for. If you do a search and find something that you want, you can then just download the message Ids in a NZB file which is really small. Then you can simply load this NZB file into Newsbin and begin downloading your files straight away. No more waiting for ages to download all the header files in a   group only to find there is nothing in the group that you want. It is simply marvellous! Agent doesn't have NZB support as yet but may do eventually. There are free indexing sites around I think, but the paid ones don't cost much and it is well worth the expense. The one I use is www.newzbin.com ( no relation to the news reader). You can also read the .nfo files that come with the posts which is very handy. Try it, believe me you'll never download binary headers again!

 

Summary

OK, so it's a little more complicated than P2P and the like, but you get solid, fast download speeds, you're not reliant on someone else's PC being on in Bangkok, and if you can't see what you want, you can always post a request asking for someone to post it. A word of warning though if you actually post as opposed to download, there is certain amount of etiquette to follow. Please read the FAQ of the group before you open your mouth and always be polite. That way, if you ask for something someone's got, they will more than likely post it. But be prepared to wait a little bit. In my opinion newsgroups are simply the dog's bollocks when it comes down to downloading that software you want to try out. The amount of knowledge out there too is quite simply staggering. If you've got a problem with a macro in Microsoft Excel, or you want to know why your parrot has gone off his food, ask it in a relevant newsgroup and someone will give you the answer. Newsgroups rule, end of story!

Rating: 10 out of 10

 

Conclusion

So there we are. You've got the big picture and you've got my opinion. The rest is up to you. Don't forget that if you like the software you download, you're supposed to pay for it. Don't we all!

 

Links

http://www.slyck.com – Simply the best web site in the world for file sharing and the like. Much more comprehensive than my own.

http://www.forteinc.com – Home of the Agent news reader

http://www.newsbin.com – Home of the Newsbin news reader

http://www.newzbin.com – The ultimate in Usenet indexing

http://www.rarsoft.com – The home of Winrar

http://www.quickpar.org.uk – For using parity files (par2 format)

http://www.slyck.com/smartpar.php – For using parity files (par format)

http://www.newshosting.com – For the best news server package around

http://www.giganews.com – A good news server, but expensive

http://www.usenettools.net – A great source of information

http://www.vcdquality.com – Check out those movie releases!

http://www.videohelp.com – Want to know your SVCD from your DIVX? Go here!

http://www.purplecloud.net – Simply the best hosting company around!

http://www.w3schools.com – Full, free web building tutorials

http://www.allofmp3.com – Legal MP3s at a ridiculously low price!