Article by Brandon T
New Zune users all have the same thing on their minds as soon as they start putting music and videos onto their brand new zune players…..where do I get more? The majority of them look towards the free online services and the illegal download services because they can get music, movies, games, wallpaper and everything they want for free. What’s better than free stuff right? Well, after reading this article, you will be thinking twice about using any free service on the internet again for downloading.
There are 3 things you need to know before you go off and start downloading free music or movies from the internet. These three things could save you a lot of time, money, frustration, and headaches.
The first thing you need to be aware of, is the harmful software that can come along with any file, whether it be a music file, movie file, game file…etc. It may look normal on your computer after you have downloaded it, but little do you know that when you were downloading the file, it contained extra spyware, adware, or trojan worms along with the download that can cause major disruptions within your computer processing.
The spyware and adware are used by information steelers to plant these into your computer to send back your personal data that they can then use to get your passwords, personal private information and more. In other instances, some software can completely destroy your computer’s ability to process information correctly, thus rendering your computer useless. This is the worst case scenario, but I can testify to this from first hand experience. Back when I was in college, with my first computer, I started downloading files from various free services online and my computer only lasted one year after I started downloading these files. By then, in order to get it fixed, it was just easier buying an entire new computer.
The second problem with free services are the downloads speeds available to users. Obviously, the faster your connection, the faster your downloads might be. However, in the case of free services, you get what you pay for, which is nothing. When there are a lot of users online downloading files from the same site, everything and everybody’s downloads go slower. It won’t matter what kind of connection you have. In some cases, the free services max the speed of the downloads to limit their resources.
Lastly, there is always the headache of corrupt files or incomplete downloads. The worst thing in the world is when you’ve waited for hours to download the latest movie, only to find that when you open it, you simply can’t. It just pops up an stating “cannot open; corrupt file”. Or there’s always the instances where your sitting their watching the download bar go higher and higher and when its almost done, it pops up an error stating “cannot complete download”. Your not exactly sure why, but now you need to try doing it all over again. What a wast of time.
These are all risks and headaches you have to be willing to take when you go the route of free services for your music, movies, games or anything for that matter. They may be free and seem like a good idea, but you may find that the headaches and the future costs of potentially having to pay for repairs to your computer or replacing your computer completely may not be worth it in the end. There are affordable solutions to this which can cost as little as for a lifetime membership to a download service. They are legal, safe, and reliable which helps avoid a lot of the frustrations and costs that can go with the free services.
