Install Limewire - Limewire Basic is freely available to the general public. It's currently limited to 200 search hits, but that shouldn't stop you from trying it to see if you want to continue. Limewire Pro has no such limits and the upgrade fee is reasonable.

Several versions ago, Limewire (at least the one I tried) was loaded with adware. I was completely disgusted and dumped it from my system. However, the newest version that I just tried has no ad or spy stuff at all, at least not that I can find.

Installing Limewire Basic is fairly straightforward. You'll have to get past a bunch of skull and crossbones warnings about the perils of P2P. The only thing that's loaded is the program and Java runtime environment. If you decide to uninstall Limewire, there will be some Java files left behind, and the Java runtime environment will also remain.

Limewire Basic intentionally limits the number of files found during searches. This (of course) was done to get you to purchase Limewire Pro. The interface is fairly easy to use and ads are pretty low key.

Limewire serves as a media librarian for your PC. It displays music by artist, title, and other tags. The program also previews and plays music files and uses Windows Media Player to show video. It has a connection monitor where you can monitor incoming searches of your shared folder, as well as track files being uploaded from you by others. Limewire can also launch pages in a browser other than Internet Explorer.

Limewire - Limewire is a free program that allows users on the Internet to share music, video and other files. Limewire also allows a user to search for content on other users' computers and download those files. No centralized server or website is used to store files. Limewire directly transfers files from one user to another, hence the term "peer-to-peer" or P2P file sharing. It's more accurate to say that a file is being transferred instead of downloaded in the context of P2P applications. Limewire allows you to share or access any file type such as MP3, AVI/MPEG, JPG, etc. Because it is written in the Java programming language, it will run on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and other operating systems.

Is Limewire legal? And what about those "transferred" files? That all depends on what you do with the software. Some artists make their music freely available on file sharing services, in order to gain exposure or because they just want to give it away for free.

Obtaining music on those terms via Limewire or a similar P2P service is perfectly legal and even encouraged. But copyright laws protect the creators of original works, such as music, movies, photos and artwork. Individuals who reproduce, distribute, or receive copies without the consent of the owners may be in violation of copyright laws. To put that in context, if you copy commercially available music or video files without paying for it, you're probably breaking the law.