NOTE: Another loss in the file-sharing community. Gnotella's two directors, Shaun Sidwall and Jonathon Levinson, have both resigned from their positions. They both cited a breakdown in communications between themselves and company President and CEO, Stephane Chouinard, as their immediate reason for their resignations. For this reason, development of Gnotella has been suspended, and I don't expect to be seeing a release of a new beta in the future...

Gnotella - This, as you may have guessed in its name, its a Gnutella client - which basically means its a program that connects to the Gnutella network in order for you to search and download your files. There are many Gnutella clients available on the net, Bearshare being a pretty poor example of one, but this one was recommended to me by a friend (again).

Gnotella is a simple program at heart. The interface looks pretty ugly, but you are able to get skins off the net to make it better-looking. The layout of the entire program is also made pretty simple for the user - there are tabs at the top allowing you to navigate around easily, and a range of setup options allowing you to get the most of the program.

The search facility is also good. It allows you to do what Bearshare really should of - sort your searches into categories: sound, video, images etc. You can perform more detailed searches such as MP3s, mpeg/mpgs, or .avi files (see screenshot). Oh, and a feature that Gnotella includes - which you don't see much in other file-sharing programs - is the fact you can perform multiple searches simultaneously (up to 3 searches at a time) - which is pretty cool. The searches are pretty fast too, but you'll never get the message "No files found", as Gnotella will continue to search for a file over the WHOLE network (and its a BIG network) forever, so if you don't get a result after about a minute or two, my advice to you is to search for something else.

Oh, and another thing. Because you are connecting to the Gnutella network, you have to bear in mind that when you start the program, you have to let Gnotella connect to various servers for you before you can perform any searches and downloads. This can be quick, it can take time - it really depends on......luck I guess. Just keep an eye on the "Hosts" tab (see screenshot), and wait for one of the servers' status to change to: "Outgoing" or "Incoming" - you can then begin to search for your files. I say this because Gnotella don't really make it clear in its help files.

Downloads are reasonably fast (it really depends on the speed of the user you are getting the file from). And resume-able downloads are supported, so you can continue a broken transfer if you get disconnected from the net or anything. The option to download the same file from different sources is not available - which is a shame; you can really see the difference in speeds when you are using, say, Morpheus or iMesh, which does support this feature.

Another feature that is lacking is that there is no internal players. However, at the end of the day, it is the files you want - internal players are merely added luxuries, and that doesn't stop you from pulling out your own external players! (If you want to download external audio or video players, go to the link on the left under MP3 and Video Tools).

Gnotella, however, isn't very user-friendly. I don't know why this is, but I always feel very alone when I am using this program. This is probably because you have no identity when you are using a Gnutella client, and neither does anyone else. For that reason, you won't see any "Hotlist" related feature in this program. 

Oh, and before I forget, I've heard that this program contains Spyware. I don't exactly know what implications that could cause, but if you wanna find out more info on this, check out the links on this site.

SUMMARY: So, Gnotella is a pretty.....I dunno. It's kinda hard to explain in words. I always feel very alone when I'm using this program. Apart from the fact that I'm a weird person, the reason for this is probably because the interface is very bare, and on a Gnutella client, you are anonymous. There are no usernames that anyone has, and there are no accounts that need to be created.
But onto the technical info., Gnutella is great to use to get MP3s, and videos. The only problem is you don't know whether the files are complete ones or not - you kinda have to guess. But on the whole, its a good program to use if you can't find the files you want on the other file-sharing programs.  

Pros : Lots of files - Multiple searches - Simple interface - Resumable downloads

Cons : Interface is too bare - Very few features available - Apparently contains Spyware

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