8. eMule And eDonkey

Summary: eMule and eDonkey are the underdogs of P2P. But at 5 million and 7 million users respectively, they still have large user bases.

Figure 7: eDonkey User Interface (click to enlarge)

Speed: Most users who try these programs immediately dismiss them as too slow. But as you share more, you move up in priority, which results in faster downloads. Personally, I have never spent the time to build up to higher speeds with either program, so can't say how fast they will get. All I can say is that they run as slow as a turtle for a first-time user, taking several days to download your first file. The good part is that there is a huge variety of files.

Variety of Content: Large variety of files. eMule got 7 hits for a search of DVR-MS files.

Figure 8: eMule User Interface (click to enlarge)

Comments: I suggest that if you are going to use either of these programs, to start with small files and expect download to take a few hours or days to finish. As a result, I suggest using them only if you're looking for rare files that you can't find anywhere else. Despite the "No Spyware!" displayed prominently on its home page, eDonkey2000 is supported by whenUSave adware and my anti-virus program marked it as adware and deleted it immediately.

Keep in mind that many of eMule / eDonkey users are heavy P2P users and share larger amounts of files. So these applications offer a larger variety of files for the amount of users present. This search engine also has an extremely quick response time.