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OnShare
Price: £24.99 inc VAT unlimited bandwidth (free with a monthly 100MB cap)

Features
Performance
Ease of use
Value for money
Overall

Reviewed By: Andy Shaw

This review updated: 06/07/2006
Featured in magazine:
Issue 139
Manufacturer Contacts:
Supplier: Z Group
Web Address: www.onshare.com


File sharing has been controversial but popular since the early days of Napster. But no matter what you think about piracy, file sharing also has its legitimate uses, whether you're looking to share photos, home videos or any other digital content on your hard disk. If you want to avoid the viruses, spyware and illegal files found in the dark corners of the web, OnShare offers a clean, secure alternative for sharing files and chat with your trusted friends and contacts in the utmost privacy.

Features
It looks a lot like an instant messenger – launch the software and a list of friends you've agreed to share files with appears. The system is well integrated into Windows so works almost as if your friends are on the same network as you, and you can simply open up folders with their files in and drag them into your own folders. You can choose which individual files you want to share, but unlike a regular network, you can share different files with different users, allowing you to share stag night photos with your mates and home movies with your family safely. A chat client is built in so you can chat as you share, but perhaps most importantly, everything is peer to peer – a direct connection is created between the sharing computers with no central servers involved.

Performance
OnShare uses 2,048-bit encryption compared to the 64- or 128-bit encryption that's used to secure most Wi-Fi networks. In practice, this ought to stop anyone from snooping on what you're doing. The speed of the service itself depends on the speed of the internet connections at each end, so it's worth remembering most internet connections are slower to upload than download, and that you're not going to see the kinds of speeds you get from BitTorrent and the like, which can download bits of data from several sources at once.

Ease of use
If you've ever had a glance at software such as BitTorrent clients and shuddered at the thought of using them, then this will be a breath of fresh air. Because it's so well streamlined with the operating system, browsing another user's files is easy. You don't even have to have the messenger-like window open – just open My Computer, choose OnShare Devices and the folders you can access on others' computers are right there.

Value for money
The service is free as long as you stay inside a bandwidth cap of 100MB – go over and it stops until the next calendar month. If you want unlimited sharing you'll have to pay £24.99 for a year's subscription.

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