6. iMesh

Summary: According to Download.com, iMesh is the second most popular P2P on the planet with 112 million users who downloaded the program. iMesh has tried to restructure their image by allowing people to publish original music through its network, and premium content is available for purchase. But there is still tons of illegal copyrighted material to be had anyway using iMesh.

Figure 5: iMesh User Interface (click to enlarge)

Speed: I could locate only 3 Red vs. Blue files; not enough to do a reliable download speed check. I thought the small number of files was odd and even odder that none of them would download. I think iMesh is running some kind of filter for copyrighted content even though Red vs. Blue is legal to download. So I found a independent artist offering freely distributable content and clocked in a download rate of 16 kB/s.

Variety of Content: Limited by suspected copyrighted file filters

Comments: iMesh searches were even faster than Morpheus and the availability stars make it obvious what is a quick download and what is not. I am curious to see what will happen as iMesh continues to restructure and offer premium content that can be purchased. An annoyance of this program is that it changes your browser homepage unless you tell it not to.