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What would things be like if you could hook up to a million other computers, and watch the movies, play the music, and share the files on any of them?

That’s the principle behind 4Shared. About a million users have file sharing software installed on their computers, and 4Shared lets you access all the shared files on those computers. What are your musical tastes: Zeppelin? Vivaldi? Kitaro?  We found them all. You can listen to streaming music, or download the actual MP3 files or ZIP/RAR archives. MP3 files ranged in quality up to 320kHz.

When it comes to downloads, it’s all about speed. Unlike file sharing systems we’ve used in the past (Limewire and BitTorrent), the downloads are web-cached so the downloads and extremely fast and reliable. We didn’t find pieces of files, nor did we get files creeping along at slow speeds. The download speeds were incredibly fast (over 400k/second), and the variety of what is available is mind-boggling. We found music from just about every artist we searched for, including thousands of full albums.

Loads of videos, including full movies are also available, but you’ll need to pay to download larger files. An unlimited download account is under $10 for a whole month’s worth of unrestricted, unlimited downloads.

If you’re looking to expand your music or movie collection, you’ll really want to try 4Shared. We were impressed with the speed and sheer volume of files available.

Pros: Free access to files, fast downloads, millions of shared files available.

Cons: Search results sometimes timed out, but that’s understandable.

Rating: 10/10

Link: http://www.4shared.com