XoloX - It's been an amazing time creating this website. I've received many e-mails of praise, and helpful advice. But one thing that really made me think, "yeah, creating this site has been a success", was when I began to receive e-mails from companies who have actually created the programs and asked me to review them for them. And XoloX was one of them - and I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised of how good this program actually was...

XoloX is another Gnutella client. There are many other Gnutella clients on the net, such as Bearshare and Gnotella, but this one, I'm happy to say, is quite different. The first thing I noticed about it is how small the client was - only around 600k. This did mean that the program can run in the background without eating a load of your memory.

The actual client itself is extremely simple and easy to use. As soon as you log on, you automatically begin trying to connect to one of the Gnutella servers. This can take time, but its done with relatively little fuss, and quite undercover. I say this because, well, clients like Gnotella and Bearshare pretty inanely show the servers that it is trying to connect to in its own separate tabbed window, but XoloX proves that there's not really much point.

The interface and layout of the program is really what makes it so simple to use. It is a commonly used tabbed layout to change windows for different options, but it XoloX, there are only 3 of these tabs: Search, Transfers and Files. When I first started using this program, I was a little bit suspect about this, thinking that its lack of options will be an Achilles Heel to the client, but the more I used it, the more I realised that in a file-sharing client - these are the only three tabs you should essentially ever need to use.

The Search facility is also easy to use, but does lack detail (see screenshot). You can search for different types of media, such as Audio or Video or whatever, but its disappointing that XoloX doesn't incorporate extra info. such as the bitrate of MP3s, which Bearshare have now started to do. I guessing its because its only recently that the Gnutella network has begun to start supporting this being the reason why it isn't in this file-sharing program - hopefully we'll see it in the next Beta release. That said, XoloX still only shows the bare essentials that you need to know when finding a file - the name of the file, the type of media it is, and the size.

Quite cool is the status bar that appears at the bottom of the window showing information about the when the downloads have started or finished.

And the key feature of this program is that it's the first that I know of the Gnutella clients that supports multi-source downloads - meaning that if more then one person has a the same file that you want, the client will download parts of the file from all the different sources - thus increasing the speed of the download immensely (see screenshot below). That feature alone should make anyone want to download the program, as you'll often find that when you are downloading files from the Gnutella network, a lot of the servers are often busy. Oh, and one annoying thing about the display of the results is when you have to scroll down and continue to hold down the mouse button, the screen freezes while you move the scrollbar, and it isn't until you release it when the screen shows the rest of the results. Hmm.......I doubt if I explained that properly, but you'll know what I mean when your using XoloX.

The speed of downloads (see screenshot) aren't as fast as, say, Morpheus, but I can pretty much say that there being support for multi-source downloads does mean that it is the fastest Gnutella client available. Of course, now being a standard in almost all file-sharing clients, resumable downloads are supported meaning you can continue to download a file if you get disconnected from the net by some idiot trying to get through on the phone.

One downfall of this program could be the fact that it does have few features such as internal players with bells on, but, you know, I'm guessing that XoloX isn't trying to be packed with novelties and items that you effectively don't need. It seems to be designed with one purpose: to be a Gnutella client that is easy to use and so very, very simple.

SUMMARY: XoloX then. It's a real nice program to use, and just may be the best Gnutella client I've ever used - mainly due to it being the first one to support multi-source downloads. I think its simplicity and "easiness" of use makes this a unique client. I think that increased options and detail in the search facility is what's really lacking here, and some may dislike the fact that there are so few features in the program. But its small, its simple, and it downloads files at a good speed. And that's exactly what the program is intending to do.

Pros : Sooooooooooo easy to use - User friendly - Multi-source downloads for a Gnutella client (yeah!) - Resumable downloads.

Cons : Few features - Lacks details in search results

[ READ COMMENTS ABOUT THIS PROGRAM ]