What is a P2P program? Why do you need one? What are they useful for? These three were some of the first questions to pop in my mind when I saw the title for this article. A P2P program is a way to download different programs, media files, video images, anything in digital format that you share from one user to another.



Why would you need a P2P program, well have you ever surfed around for a way to download any of the files mentioned earlier? A P2P program is the safest and easiest way to do it. All you need to know is the title or description of what you are looking for, such as programs, e-books, or music and the time to download it. There is a large list of P2P programs available, some free such as my favorite Limewire, while others charge a fee to use their service.

You have to be careful when deciding on which program to use, as some of them do charge, and can and will put other programs in your computer you would not normally allow. For example remembered when you downloaded that great screen saver and new search bar was installed on your Internet Explorer, or you now get popups where you did not before because of some program added to your system. Another thing to be aware of is that although they say free to download and burn to a disk, this is not necessarily true. I used a program once and it stated that you can burn your downloads for free, however when it came time to burn them to disk. The CD would not burn due to needing a license key for the program itself.

When it comes to searching the programs you need to watch how you phrase things, or you could end up with a list of items you did not want or need. If you know the name of the program, and who created it you should find what you are looking for. Some of these programs have advance searching options. With the advance search, you need to know not only the name and who created the program, but the year it was made, and what Operating System you are running.

One common search is music files, with these the more you know the better luck you will have finding it. If you type in just the name of the song you could end up with versions or remixes that, you may not have been looking for. Also, say if you are looking for a specific artist and format such as WMA then you need to type in the artist and WMA in the search bar. Many of the P2P Networks use Java based applications and the files shared are monitored through networks as Gnutella or Freenet.