Friday, 25th May 2007 at 06:22pm
eMule Plus is pretty much a more cleaner and user friendlier version of eMule. eMule is a P2P program - a program that allows you to download shared files from other people's computers, swapping them sort of. Hundreds of thousands of people use the eMule Plus servers which means you'll almost always find the file that you're looking for no matter how rare and at high speeds too!
I first started to use eMule Plus only a year or so ago. I previously used WinMX that got closed download a while ago because it became too unreliable and I have to say moving from WinMX to eMule Plus was an excellent jump. eMule Plus had tonnes of new features that WinMX lacked, I felt safer downloading on their servers and not to mention the incredible speed increase that I got from using it - which increased how fast I got my downloads.
You can find the download at the official eMule Plus page. If you're running Windows then you'll want to download the 'Installer' version. Once you've clicked 'Installer' you'll be taken to Source Forge (who you can trust completely). Chose the latest version of the program and finally click the installer download, (the type is .exe) then choose a mirror.
Go through the typical installation windows and then launch the program. The screen you're now looking at can look slightly daunting, but it really is easy to use once you've gotten used to it.
As soon I get a shiny, new program I always like to look at the preferences and see what the program can do and how I can make it suit my needs. You can skip this section if you just want to start downloading.
On the General tab (in 'General'), you can choose your nick name, which other people will be able to see whilst you're downloading off them. There are millions of people on eMule and whilst you can, its unlikely that you'll be making any friends, so there's no need to pick a memorable name, I use allroundnews.co.uk as a way of advertising. The '3D depth' option controls how much the bossing effects the progress/percentage downloaded bar, it doesn't do anything to the program but it looks nifty. Take a look through the rest of the options on this tab, they're pretty self explanatory.
In the Directories, you should set 'Incoming files' to your downloads folder. Your 'video player for preview' should be the video play that you use to listen to music or watch videos on, most probably Windows Media Player. You should selected the directories that you are willing to share in the 'shared directories' section.
You can take a look around the other options if you wish, but I'd say you've just done the most important things.
Firstly, you have to connect to a server. Think of a server of a big room where your computer can go, via the Internet, to talk to other computers. The more machines your computer can "talk" to the better. In the column bar click 'Files', this sorts the servers putting the server with the most files at the top. Double click the top server for your best connection prospects. Now you're ready to download!
Choose 'Search' from the top navigation bar, in eMule Plus. If you were looking for a song, where it says 'Name' insert the name of the song. Most people save songs in the format Artist - Song Title, so it would be best if you search like that. Where it says 'Type' choose 'Audio'. If you're fussy about only getting MP3 files, then put .mp3 into the 'Extension' field. You'll most likely be presented with a number of results. To find the best result for you order the items by 'Source' (do this by clicking 'Sources', then the highest number should be at the top). Find the file that you'd like to download and double click it.
If you'd rather find a whole album, then instead of choosing 'Audio' in the 'Type' choose 'Archive'. You'll then be given a list of .zip or .rar files, which you'll need an archive extractor to open (such as WinRar).
You'll be able to see the progress of the download on the 'Transfers' tab, in the top navigation bar. Once its done, to open it you can either right click it and choose 'Open' from the menu or find your downloads folder and open it the normal way.
The P2P system is one of receiving and giving - without both the system would collapse. How do you think you'd get your files if the person you downloaded them from decided that he didn't want to be nice and let you have them? Uploading (giving) is a necessary part of P2Ping.
Uploading is easy - you just do nothing. Just leave eMule Plus running and you'll immediately start giving back, as long as the file is in a shared folder. You can see the status of what's uploading and to whom you're uploading to in the pane below the one which gives you details of what you're downloading.
The reason people aren't so happy with uploading is because they find it slows their connection down. This is the age of broad band internet, so uploading a little bit shouldn't be to much hassle or hinder your connection too much - so that's really no excuse. If it really does bug you though, just leave eMule running during the night or just turn it on before you go to make a cup of tea or have lunch - everything you give back helps the system.
It's considered polite if you upload to 100% or a ratio of 1:1. This means that if you downloaded a file which was 1000 kilobytes big that you upload a 1000 kilobytes back. Most people however go to at least 200% (or if they download a file of 1000 kilobytes they upload 2000 kilobytes of it). Really generous people leave their files to upload continuously.
Sometimes you may have to wait a while before you download starts this is most probably because you're "waiting in a queue". This is a consequence of people not uploading after they have finished downloading - if everyone uploaded what they downloaded there would never be any need for queuing but a lot of people don't upload and the ones that do upload shouldn't be punished because of that so only a certain number of people can download off one person at a time. If more than that number of people want to download of them then they're put into a queue.
I'm adding this section to raise awareness and let people know that I don't condone illegal downloading and piracy of other people's products. The law covering most things allow users to download back-up copies of things like music, films, books and all those other things you are able to download. So technically its is illegal to download something if you do not already own an original copy.