so i bought an older mac Ibook g4 and i was wondering if there was a good music download prgram that i could get i tried limewire and that didnt work? and i deas?
If it has OS 10.4.11 or older, no, out of luck. You’ll find search results for "Acquisition", but it seems flaky and many bad reviews.
You should consider torrent sharing. It’s much safer than direct download, but the speed ranges from fast to very slow (depends on the number of people sharing from moment to moment). Torrents are tiny bits of files that are gathered by a torrent application from the connections of other computers (1 or more, even as many as a thousand!) and downloaded in tiny pieces onto your computer. The torrent application keeps things organized and assembles the pieces (99% of the time faultlessly). If it is interrupted, no worries. It gets right back to work as soon as you start your computer and launch the torrent app. Put the torrent app in your user account login items to be sure you get things going every time your computer starts up.
I use Vuze. It is great once you get used to its very complicated interface (has beginner, intermediate, and advanced choices, but most people only need beginner).
Note: Ignore all the forum suggestions to set up port forwarding on your router. I have never needed to do this. It seems to be fairly common to do this to make a Windows system share by torrents. For the Mac, it just works — or if it doesn’t, it is some faulty software, not the need for port forwarding.
Some details about music torrents: There are different ways that people share music (and other files) by torrent.
* The normal way is by a group of files (MP3, FLAC, or whatever), one for each song track. By the way, FLAC needs additional free software installed to enable iTunes to use the files.
* Another way, not so convenient, is by disk image (ISO or DMG). That means you can’t deselect songs; it’s all of the album or nothing. After you have downloaded the entire disk image, you can open it and throw out what you don’t like. An ISO is the same as a CRD file, so simply change the extension from .iso to .cdr. A DMG is a compressed version of the CDR, so you double-click it to expand and mount it.
* The third, and most annoying method, is by creating an ISO image or putting the files in a folder, and then breaking it into many parts with names such as "Sgt.Pepper-1.rar", "Sgt.Pepper-2.rar", "Sgt.Pepper-3.rar", etc. For that, after you get all the parts downloaded in one folder, double-click the "Sgt.Pepper-1.rar", and it will reassemble (if you are lucky) into a folder or disk image. This method is the most inane of all, since the originator does not have to upload his files and you don’t have to download them, so there is no need to break it into smaller RAR segments and it adds extra failure chance. Windows users get stuck in these old habits, so RAR continues to be used for anything and everything, just like AVI files and XP… oops, you are using 10.4, old as XP.
: )
