Approved Filehosts. Re: Rapidshare removing Rapidpoints

Heads-up... Sharingmatrix will be changing to a new brand name - Filesonic.com. Here's the little news bulletin from their website:

SharingMatrix is now FileSonic!

Dear SharingMatrix users,

We're very pleased to announce the upcoming launch of our new file sharing brand, FileSonic.com!

Here are some answers to questions you may have:

Why are we doing this? What does this mean for you?

We believe that FileSonic.com is a great brand that will grow and become an everyday name on the Internet. This means that users will utilize the site even more and that your files will be more often downloaded from this highly reliable service.

FileSonic.com will bring:

1. More features, faster downloads and uploads, and a much better site overall!
2. All your old SharingMatrix links will continue to work as they are.
3. During the first while, you will still be able to generate SharingMatrix.com links directly from FileSonic.com

When is this happening?

We are integrating more and more of the new FileSonic features as we speak. Expect a full release in mid-July, or possibly sooner!

What do I need to do?

Absolutely nothing! Just continue using our service and enjoy all the benefits of what will become "the world's best file sharing site!"

http://www.filesonic.com

 

Sharingmatrix July 2010 Promotion : Power Weekends - Double the Payouts Saturdays & Sundays ..... No Limit! *
Tip: Start uploading and sharing like crazy!



I think we will have a lot of "fun" with SM in the future. :2cent:

 

Thanks for that heads-up Punkbuster.

I guess I won't be posting anything this weekend. :no:

 

Here's an article on RS that might shed some light on their recent changes. It's pretty much what I expected. Does anyone remember napster?

Source:
http://anonym.to/?http://torrentfre...s-reward-program-over-piracy-concerns-100620/

gHe

 

Ok... I decided to take some time today to do an analysis of the four main filehosters used here: Rapidshare, Megaupload, Hotfile, & Sharingmatrix.

I want to put the caveat that I did this test as a free unregistered user - outside of Rapidshare, I don't have premium accounts to the others so it would've been a bit hard to test premium services.

So for the test, I used a 107 MB zip file to be uploaded and downloaded using the free user services of each hoster between 3pm - 9pm PST. I'm located on the West coast of the United States as speeds and download times for me may differ from others from different locations.

Rapidshare - Switzerland

Uploading: 37kb/s average speed
Estimated finish time: 45 minutes (actual time 47 minutes)
Downloading: 75kb/s average speed
Estimated finish time: 22 minutes (actual time 21 minutes)
15 minute cool down time between downloads

Megaupload - Hong Kong

Uploading: 165kb/s average speed
Estimated finish time: 2 minutes 45 secs (actual time 3 minutes)
Downloading: 142kb/s average speed
Estimated finish time: 13 minutes (actual time 13 minutes)
45 seconds cool down time between downloads

Hotfile - Panama

Uploading: unknown kb/s average speed (not shown)
Estimated finish time: 33 minutes (actual time 22 minutes)
Downloading: 160kb/s average speed
Estimated finish time: 11 minutes (actual time 10 minutes)
30 minute cool down time between downloads

Sharingmatrix - Netherlands

Uploading: 34kb/s average speed
Estimated finish time: not shown (actual time: 57 minutes unconfirmed)
Downloading: 77kb/s average speed
Estimated finish time: 22 minutes (actual time 24 minutes)
10 minute cool down time between downloads

I want to make a special note to Sharingmatrix (soon to be FileSonic) uploading times... I had trouble uploading the 107 MB file on SM after 3 tries:

1st time: Upload stopped at 67% completion
2nd time: After upload completed, I was diverted to a "server maintenance, try again later" page
3rd time: After upload completed, the page kept refreshing for 10 minutes without a link to the file. SO, I gave up.

So, couldn't download the exact 107MB file that I had been using, so downloaded a 108MB file from another SM uploader to get the download stats. (GHE's to be exact).

Summary

So, from my perspective overall, Megaupload has a lot going for it, in terms of it's quality speed for uploads and downloads - the 45 second cooldown time is especially nice.

Hotfile has faster download speeds, but the 30 minute cooldown time between downloads hurts a bit - a 2nd place finish.

Sharingmatrix comes in third BARELY - the download speeds are decent despite the 10 minute cooldown - but my upload test really turned me off from SharingMatrix. I may have caught SM on a server maintenance period, but after 3 tries within 3 hours, that's just pretty poor. Maybe it'll be improved once they change to their new FileSonic brand.

Rapidshare comes in last - their upload speeds are average, download speeds are ok but come with a 15 minute wait time. MOST OF ALL, files uploaded as a free user are only good for 10 downloads. If you want to keep them up longer, you have to pay to host your files.

 

Are depostfiles.com links still allowed here on phun? I haven't downloaded anything in a really, really long time, so I don't know if there was a rule change there. It's an alternative I see (or used to see) in place of RS links.

How do you feel about badongo, or using letitbit? I found these two services really nice in terms of speed of download before, (long while ago, but still stood out) though I never used either very much in terms of uploading and sharing.

DF can go screw... their wait times are even worse than RS.

 

this may shed some light on the users who get the 10 minute loop with sharingmatrix:
http://beusergroup.co.uk/drsox/iwf/index.php?host=sharingmatrix.com

if you don't know what the IWF is, its an unelected, unaccountable organisation that is fucking shit up for uk web users.
They are supposed to block sites reported for CP, but if a file host gets reported, shit breaks because all requests from the uk appear to be coming from the same ip address.

 

i have already stopped using rapidshare