Leave Your Conscience at the Door. Review on Morpheus

Once upon a time, in a distant part of Cyberspace something amazing was created. From this point onwards, the Internet would never be the same. However after going through puberty and reaching it's peak of development it was cruelly hunted down by the authorities and stripped of all that it was, only leaving a bare carcass. It was Napster.

But hey, don’t worry, it's not all doom and gloom, there's a happy ending to this story. I think that Napster had a cheeky little bit of action along the way, because there is a new kid on the block now, and he's just hitting his prime. Yup, I'm talking about Morpheus…oh and what a big boy he is too!

When Napster was killed by all the filters that were placed on it by the American courts I thought that was it, that was the end of getting all those songs that you hear one night when you are out and just know that you have to have them. I never went in to whole scale downloading of albums left right and centre from Napster, rather songs that would be hard to come by in a shop. Come on, who really wants to spend £14 on a CD for just one song? Well, I didn't. Naturally there were times when I may have gone a little over the top with the amount I downloaded, going past my own ethos of not taking too much.

But now, well I just don’t care anymore. Anything I can get my hands on I'll have it. And this is exactly where Morpheus jumps in. Napster did well but it wasn't perfect at all. But then first time ventures usually aren't. Morpheus has taken the lessons learned by Napster and evolved and grown.

~~So what is Morpheus?~~

Well, in its basic form it is just an FTP, or File Transfer Programme of which there are thousands across the net. However it's big, really big. At the time I started writing this op, a glum Saturday afternoon, there are more than just a couple of people logged on, 618, 571 to be precise sharing a whopping 462,808 gigabytes of material!! I'm sorry, but that is massive and seriously impressive by anyone's standards. Essentially Morpheus links in to the Gnutella network which many similar programmes do also. This allows the consolidation of massive quantities of material from many different sources. All those people using differing programmes all come together in one network. All really very nice.

~~Is Morpheus just another MP3 grabber then?~~

Well this is where Morpheus picks up the baton and carries on from where good old Naspter left off. We all love free music, well you can get that on this network. However, what about free programmes and games. The latest virus protection software? Half Life or one of its add ons? Well they are just two of the programmes I know you can get. You always could somewhere on the net, it's just easier and under one virtual roof now. Not only that, pictures and videos can be obtain from others over Morpheus. Most of, if not all the latest videos are able to be downloaded on to your PC. Naturally, these, like the games and programmes aren't going to be small, taking many many hours to download. But just leave it going overnight, no worries. That brings me on to one of the most important points.

~~How is Mopheus so different?~~

For those of you on a modem connection, how many times have you come off line, only to realise that you were in the middle of a download? Well for me it was an infuriatingly regular occurrence, got a dreadful memory you see. Well fret not, it's ok now. Morpheus has full capability to resume any download that you start. If you are online and suddenly need to use the phone line, just right click and select to pause the download. All very handy. Not only that, the programme sees what you are downloading at can get it from many sources at once, downloading parts from those with the same file, so speeding up the download. Well that's what's claimed at least! Personally I find that it can slow things up. But still, good idea!

Have you got little kids that might be using the computer? Well if so, then there are filters that can be adapted so that nothing 'naughty' comes up after you type in your key words to search. Because however many time you search for hardcore music you know exactly what you are going to get back.

Not only that, you have a choice as to what sort of criteria your search should be delineated by, such as: Audio, Image, Video, Software or Documents, or all of the previous. Certainly more than Napster gave us.

~~Neal, c'mon, you've sold me, where do it get Morpheus from?~~

Well, not going to tell you! Only joking. If you skip along merrily to https:// mussiccity.com you can grab the download from there, like 25 million others have done, or so the site tells me!

If you liked Napster, you'll love Morpheus, there's no doubt about that. All that you need to do is leave your conscience at the door, because downloading can and does break copyrights, and hence the fail of Napster. However, this little beaut has no central server as Napster did, rather being peer to peer hosting, and so, with fingers tightly crossed, it wont get closed down. So go on, give it a go. I know you want to.