Morpheus - Morpheus is a file-sharing program that really surprised me. After using Gnotella for a couple of months before I picked up this program, the presentation of the previous file-sharing programs I've used were completely different. You see, Gnotella almost made me feel that you had to get really poor presented and functioning programs in order to get the, essentially illegal, files you wanted.

However, Morpheus has changed all that. The layout of the whole program and the way it feels is very user-friendly. Basically, if you've used Napster before, you'll feel right at home. That's not to say Morpheus doesn't have the features for the advanced users. It does. The searches for individual files such as MP3s and Videos can be set; (for example, bitrate for MP3s, and resolution or type of file for videos etc.) This is a great feature that really makes searching for files a pleasure to deal with. (see screenshot below-right) Also, with the added function of being able to download one file from different sources, you won't have to get worried about being "Transfer Errored" :).

One annoying thing about the searches however, is that it only displays a maximum of 100 results. Now, this may seem a lot, but when Morpheus searches for files and one person has the same file as another on your search results, it adds it to the results as another source for one file. Now, this may not mean a thing to you now, (in fact, I don't know what I'm on about myself) but what it basically means is if you are searching 2 versions of an MP3, it might only find 1 file, but give you 100 different sources in which to obtain that file. Which isn't good. But bearable. Just :)

Other great features include an internal player to play your MP3s, view your standard MPEG videos, and quickview your images (see screenshot). The player that is used to play the files are under the tab "Theater". And you also have a tab to view all your shared files, rate them and can also choose which files you want to share and which you don't. This can all be done under the tab "My Media" It all looks very professional and is neatly set out so you can easily navigate around.

Other great things that I love about this program is the speed of the downloads. If you are downloading a popular file that loads of other people have, Morpheus will connect you not just to one user, but about 4, and downloads various parts of the file simultaneously (see screenshot). This is the reason why downloading files are so fast. Also, because Morpheus connects to its own server and doesn't have to connect to various locations like some Gnutella programs, you won't need to worry about whether your connected to the right server or not - its all done for you. Cool, huh?

SUMMARY: Morpheus is a great program. I have been using for some time now to get mainly music videos and some MP3s. The thing is, a blinded monkey could use it - it is that user-friendly. There are great help files and support should anything go wrong, and the user base is expanding all the time. At time of writing this, there are just below 500,000 users online, which seems a lot, but I still seem to find it hard to get those rare files that I need.

Pros : Large user base - Very user friendly - Internal media players - Fast downloads - Easy connection to server - Resumable downloads - No spyware (apparently ;)

Cons : Maximum search results of 100 - Too much memory used to run program - Maybe a little too user friendly? - Still hard to find those rare files

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