Although BitTorrent technology has become increasingly popular over the last few years, there are still quite a few people who use comparatively old-fashioned peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, and there are plenty of clients for accessing these networks. AMule is one such program, a P2P client made to work with the eDonkey and Kad networks. Although nothing about aMule really blew us away, it seems to work just fine. AMule and the popular eMule client share a heritage, and there's a definite family resemblance when it comes to the interface. Using aMule is a pretty straightforward experience, especially if you've used any other P2P clients before; we found it easy to connect to the network and search for and download files. Users who are unfamiliar with this type of file-sharing may be confused by the presence of eDonkey, which is server-based, and Kad, which is not; the way that the two networks is dealt with in the interface may not make much sense to the uninitiated, so be forewarned if you're more used to using Gnutella-based clients. Unlike many P2P programs we've seen, aMule has no built-in media player-even for audio-but it's not difficult to designate an external media player for use with aMule.
There's no built-in Help file, but the online Help wiki is extremely thorough and well-written. Overall, we found aMule to be a basic and totally adequate file-sharing client.
AMule is free. It installs a desktop icon without asking and leaves a folder behind upon removal. We recommend this program to all users.