just got my 1st mac, a few questions....

[jaykub]

I'm a college student and I will be using my new mac mainly for video/film editing and design/artwork and the like, but I would also like to be able to share music but I dont want to even risk the chance of getting a virus or spyware that is going to mess up or slow down my mac, so should I not even bother with trying to share files? or if it is relatively safe what are the best file sharing apps that have no spyware and a pretty good selection of music?

thanks for the advice

 

[Diatribe]

I'm a college student and I will be using my new mac mainly for video/film editing and design/artwork and the like, but I would also like to be able to share music but I dont want to even risk the chance of getting a virus or spyware that is going to mess up or slow down my mac, so should I not even bother with trying to share files? or if it is relatively safe what are the best file sharing apps that have no spyware and a pretty good selection of music?

thanks for the advice

You are not seriously asking us how to download music illegally are you?
As far as viruses are concerned... there is no such thing. Spyware I do not know of any either. If you don't download "beta versions" of MS Office '04 and think that a 10kb file is the entire program you should be safe.
Regarding legal file sharing, there are a couple of programs out there. The best is to do a search on versiontracker.com

 

[Nermal]

There's a good P2P app comparison over at www.mac-p2p.com - I believe it's run by MacRumours.

 

[King Cobra]

I'm a college student and I will be using my new mac...I would also like to be able to share music

Be advised that the RIAA is cracking down on illegal music sharing at colleges...

You know you can share your iTunes library legally so that others on the same LAN as you can listen to your music without ever actually copying the file. Check out the how to guide for more info.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Be advised that the RIAA is cracking down on illegal music sharing at colleges...

You know you can share your iTunes library legally so that others on the same LAN as you can listen to your music without ever actually copying the file. Check out the how to guide for more info.

I'd recommend sharing your tunes in your iTunes library over your local subnet too. I do this at home with my iMac. If you're like me, and have music in formats that iTunes doesn't support, there are ways to get your tunes in iTunes. The way I do it is first using Winamp (for Windows) to convert the file to WAV, then WavePad (for Windows) to remove the silence at the beginning/end, then import the WAV file into iTunes (Mac/Win) and convert it into my desired format (MP3/AAC/Apple Lossless).

 

[jaykub]

thanks for the info..

I am aware of the RIAA cracking down but I will not be on a college LAN, I am using a broadband connection from my home, regardless I dont plan on DLing tons of copyrighted music, I'm more interested in just file sharing in general. How does acquisition and poisoned stack up? I have heard these 2 are probably the best but since this is my new G5 that will mainly be used for work, I'm just really paranoid about spyware and all that garbage slowing down and cluttering my mac, I probably wont even bother with p2p since so much spyware was put on my old pc from using those programs. of course, I hear OSX is a different story than windows but I'm still paranoid.

 

[bertagert]

jaykub -

You've been using kazaa too much on your windows computer. Download poison and you'll be in good shape with out any spyware. The spyware thing only happens on windows machines because kazaa and such are trying to pull in some money. Poison doesn't have this problem.

You really don't have to worry about viruses/worms/spyware on a mac as there are none. Again, ya never know when someone might write one for macs, but for now, there aren't any.

 

[Mav451]

jaykub -

You've been using kazaa too much on your windows computer. Download poison and you'll be in good shape with out any spyware. The spyware thing only happens on windows machines because kazaa and such are trying to pull in some money. Poison doesn't have this problem.

You really don't have to worry about viruses/worms/spyware on a mac as there are none. Again, ya never know when someone might write one for macs, but for now, there aren't any.

I doubt that's the case--most PC users use Kazaa Lite--a "lite" version of kazaa WITHOUT the spyware. The spyware is undoubtedly from using IE.

I used IE the other day to send a hallmark card--hallmark's very own site dumped 4 tracking cookies on my computer in the 5 minutes I spent writing/senting that e-card. Lol, needless to say, I only used IE b/c firefox didn't seem to like that site (0.9.1 should be fixing that soon however).

 

[jaykub]

is poisoned any good for other software, apps and videos? or is it mainly just music?

 

[plasticparadox]

I used IE the other day to send a hallmark card--hallmark's very own site dumped 4 tracking cookies on my computer in the 5 minutes I spent writing/senting that e-card. Lol, needless to say, I only used IE b/c firefox didn't seem to like that site (0.9.1 should be fixing that soon however).

OT, but you could use iCards instead.

 

[bertagert]

is poisoned any good for other software, apps and videos? or is it mainly just music?

It's basically kazaa on your mac just without the spyware. Download and try it out. Remember, as with all P2P programs, its not the program that offers the files, its the people you're connected to that have it.