BearShare is one of the P2P file sharing applications that rose to the fore soon after Napster started charging for music downloads. The program gets five stars for ease of use. BearShare does all of my setup for the ever-confusing Gnutella network properly and promptly. All of your options are laid out near the top of the program with tabs separating your options, much like Napster. It seems as though BearShare.com is all about getting the user what they want, the files, and not the in-your-face design. Searching for files is also fast and easy with near immediate results, and the program now comes with a built-in chat client and an ad-free paid version. You don't even need to get a username to use the service, just boot up and away you go. You configure where you want your downloads sent to, and what folders you want made available to share - as many or as few as you like, then that's it. You're ready to begin sharing. In addition, the installer actually asks your permission to install three adware or spyware applications, which you can politely decline.

One thing you have to look out for, though, is that it is sometimes difficult to gauge the speed of the client you are downloading from. In Napster you could avoid anything less than a Cable line, but here you have to make an estimate of speed yourself. There is a bar down the right hand side, which represents the speed of the client's connection - the bigger the bar, the faster your download will be. Plus, a word of warning: since files sharing is so easy, it can be very easy to pick up a virus, particularly if you download a exe or zip file, so make sure you have a virus checker in operation whilst using this software, and scan all downloaded files before you use them.

In addition, while Bearshare.com has the advantage of being able to resume broken downloads, meaning you can download large files over a number of sessions, it can be extremely slow downloading files and is often unreliable. Better to use it as part of an assortment of P2P applications, and stick with more reliable apps like LimeWire for your basic files. BearShare.com may be visually pleasing, but if you're going the P2P route, you want a network that has a 90 percent download success rate or better. Bearshare doesn't come close.