Napster issues as of late

[Gomer]

Anyone know what has been going on with napster lately. I was unable to connect a better part of yesterday and I am unable to now. For the most part I have never had a problem with it.

[Gomer]

Well wadda know? Can't connect for 5 hours--post a message--try again, there ya go I'm in. Who knows. Anyway, still interested in what the problems have been lately. I found I am not the only one having problems getting connected.

[tonym]

I could look it up on AltaVista, but I'm lazy, so...

WHAT THE HELL IS NAPSTER??? Call me ig'nant, but for the life of me never heard of it before.

TIA...

Tony

[Gomer]

Napster is a program for obtaining MP3's. Basically what it does is it makes the MP3's on your computer available to all other users of the program. There is no middle man. They can search yours and you can search theirs. At any given time there is at least 5000 Gb of MP3's available for download. Normally it is great. It lists their type of connection, ping, length of the song, and the bitrate of the MP3.

For more info go to www.napster.com (http://www.napster.com) If you do MP3's it's the way to go.

[OuTpaTienT]

I was getting the message "unable to connect" just an hour or so ago. But it seems to be working now.

Napster is great for finding anything mainstream and popular, but with anything else it's just dumb luck if someone has what you're looking for. The more obscure the song, the less likely you'll ever see it on Napster.

I gotten well over half my collection of mp3's from the newsgroups. This is a GREAT source of mp3's. Plus you're more likely to find the songs for entire CD's all at once. Plus, you CAN request whatever you want. So far I've requested maybe 12-15 CD titles on various occasions. And unbelievably I had at least 5 of those request fullfilled, and maybe more, my newsgroups turnover so fast if I go 12-24 hours without checking I'll miss a group full of messages.

Plus, EVERY single mp3 I've snagged from the newsgroups has been high quality (minimum 128bit/44k, often higher bit levels like 160 or 220).

Check all the groups that start with:
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3

and you can try making requests here:
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.requests

[Gomer]

Having just a 56K modem, napster works the best for me. I have never dealt with newsgroups though. The key to finding things with napster is, if you don't find it, disconnect then reconnect. You have acces to a whole different groups of mp3's

[OuTpaTienT]

That's too bad Gomer. You're missing out on a great resource (of EVERYTHING, not just mp3's).

And with a 56k modem, you're gonna get your best speed downloading things that are directly at your ISP, like the newsgroups. Most ISP's have they're own news servers or offer a direct connect to a news server they subscribe to. Either way, you're likely to get much better downloading times from the newsgroups than from ...well, from anywhere.

Napster is usually extremely slow transfering files. Besides, the whole Napster experience for us cable/dsl/T1 users is really hindered by you slowpokes trying for an hour or so to leech one song from us. hehe, just playing, sorta.

What IS annoying though is the loser that tries to d/l so many songs at one time that the throughput on all his transfers hovers around 0.18k...Arrrrgghhhh! I hate those people.

[Gomer]

One at a time for me. 3.5 k/s usually. Where can I find out more about this newsgroup deal.

[wyvrn]

Most ISP's give a news server. Swbell uses news.swbell.net . Uswest uses news.uswest.net . Most browsers, namely Netscape, have newsgroups built in. Go to edit, preferences, mail and news servers. Enter your news server (check with ISP) in the proper blank and subscribe. First time subscribe takes forever (d/l about 40,000 groups), but after that you are good to go. Deja News is a well like web-based newsgroup I think, I have never needed to use it though. Good luck.

[neo_otyugh]

i have downloaded over 3000 mp3s from napster. the way it works is that you log onto a server that then refers you to various servers where you can actually get mp3s. the first server gets a heavy load, and you have trouble getting on. if you disconnect and reconnect you will be on a new server most of the time, and have all new songs to search through. I have found some very rare stuff in there...it does take time, but I do not like a lot of the "popular" music and take my time to get what i want...

[OuTpaTienT]

Yeah. I feel so sorry for you poor chaps trying to find cool, rare, odd, etc. music on Napster. Often I just login to Napster then go to bed, giving everyone access to my musical collection.

I started doing this because I figured I'd just help out that guy, like myself, that has such a difficult time on Napster trying to find...oh, say anything from the group Badlands, or the entire Judas Priest Sad Wings of Destiny album, or something from Accept, anything from Y & T (I'm surprised as how many people don't even know who Y&T is!).

So, obviously I need to work a bit at being humble, but my generosity goes without question. (hehe, ok ok, I'll get to work on that humble thing.)

[chipbgt]

also try out www.audiofind.com (http://www.audiofind.com)

its not as good as napster, but when napsters not working it might give you a quick second option.

[Target]

Hey outpatient.... I'm familiar with, and a fan of, Y&T. You're not alone brother!

Mean Streak rules http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif