Getting started in Piolet is very simple. The program itself is very simple to use, the layout, icons and other features make it really easy when you are ready download your favourite music and share your files with thousands of users like yourself.

In spite of all this, we are aware that for many of you, this may be the first time you will be working with us and for that reason, we state here a useful guide with quick tips and tricks for you to feel more comfortable and get used to downloading, managing and sharing your music with the huge community Piolet has managed to create. This list shows some questions you might come across when using Piolet as a beginner.

How does this network work?

The Piolet network is designed so that users sharing huge libraries have advantages over users sharing a small amount of music, or not sharing at all. The more you share, the faster you get what you want! Moreover, keeping your Piolet running for as long as possible gives you the opportunity to get a better position in the sharing scale, getting your files downloaded faster and easier.

As minutes go by, your system will run smoother and more stable, so your downloads will follow the same line. That is why it is a great idea to have Piolet running on each system startup, the more time it is working, the better position it takes on the network, giving faster and more reliable access to the music. It can be useful for you to minimize your Piolet on your system tray, for doing this will make it be more advantageous, using less resources.

Did you know that...

Piolet assures you a never seen before speed-rate on your music downloads. Being a Piolet user, you join an enormous music community, having thousands of persons sharing their songs with you. It is very easy to get a good connection on your free downlaods due to the amount of connections Piolet automatically works with at the moment you run it up on your system.

The more files you download, the more users you are working with, and this makes your shared songs downloadable for them too, so you will be getting faster and faster connections and better results.

Before you download...

- Our team has worked hard to give you the best and fast service you deserve when downloading your music. Piolet features swarming downloads. This means that when you are downloading a popular file, it will connect to several users simultaneously to get the song faster. You can make a double click on the title of the song you are downloading from another user and listen to it as much as it has already transfered. The swarming download will let you hear the finished parts of the song, and the skips you might notice are the empty parts that are being filled in at that same moment.

- Piolet connections need a warming-up time. When you open your Piolet software, it starts making and dropping connections with thousands of users. After a few minutes, your position inside the Piolet network is stable and your access to the content much better. If you can't find a song, wait for some minutes and try downloading it again, and remember: sharing more music will improve your virtual position on the network!

- Try to be as concrete as you can in your searches. If you are looking for a specific song, you will have much more satisfactory results if you type the name of the band and the song title, rather than only the name of the band or only the song title. Searching for only the name of and artist or a band will only get you i.e. 200 results. If you search for 1 concrete song of that band, you'll get 200 results, improving the possibility of a reliable download.

-The correct and most common way of naming a song file is Artist-Songtitle.ext, for example "Mala estrella - Die this day.mp3". Following the standard will help everybody in the community, including yourself, to easily find and manage files.

- Each file has a property named "MD5". The MD5 is a hash created from the contents of the file. Two files are the same, even if their names are different, as long as their MD5 is the same. This helps Piolet in tasks like downloading files from different sources simultaneously and to work faster by knowing how many people shares the same exact song. Regardless of the name of the file or its size, a song version will be detected to be the same exact version as other if they have the same MD5.

Handy "tricks" and information

- Always try popular versions, that is, try the ones found in several sources, against the ones found on only one user. This will not only make the download much faster, but also will ensure you that the file you are getting is the correct one. Files with several sources are much more available to download. If you try downloading a file which is hosted by 1 user, you have 65-85% chances to success. A file hosted by 10 users gives you 95.5-98.5% chances to success your downloading faster.

- When you do a search, Piolet will show you a list of results. Each result, in case it comes from only 1 user, will show, along with other information, the user's nick name, the client (s)he is using and the version of that client. The user column will show this information in the format "nickname@clientname.clientversion" for example Amanda@Piolet.1.03.

- All the downloads you make using Piolet are auto-resumable downloads. This means that it will remember the files that you are downloading, along with the data already downloaded, even between sessions.

- There are some tasks that you can do using Piolet that will affect your file management to make it easier after downloading. For example, deleting a file from "My music" folder will delete it completely from your computer, and the same applies to "rename".

- When you search, some files will have a different, yellow icon. Those files are compressed using a cutting-edge, open-source technology: Ogg Vorbis. Ogg usually offers better quality and smaller files, so we could say it is more advanced than MP3, as we explained in www.Piolet.com.

Piolet extra features

You can have real voice chat with other Piolet users. To start a voice chat session, open a private chat window (Action menu > User > Chat) and click the "Voice!" button. After the other user accepts the voice chat query, press "Talk" and hold it pressed while talking on your microphone. The other user will receive your voice messages on real time!

If you are interested in keeping in touch with those friends you have and the new ones you will make, you can add users to your buddy list. This way you can even meet people with your same music tastes. Keep in mind that due to the decentralized nature of Piolet, the Buddy list may not work perfectly, and sometimes you may see buddies as if they were offline, even if they are fully connected to the network, but this are the least.

If you are an avid gamer, and you are interested in having Piolet running while you play your favorite game, it is recommended to disable chat and voice chat queries, so that you are not interrupted in your game by other users. Go to "Configuration" > "Network" > "Chat" and select your preferences.

Take your music with you!

You can burn the music you download into music CDs. The first step after you have placed the songs in "My Music" folder is to convert the MP3 to WAV format, the one used for Audio CDs. Right-click the file in the shared list and select "Convert to .WAV", then select the destination folder. After that you can use your favourite burning software to create your own CDs with the music you downloaded from Piolet.

We hope you feel satisfied with our services, and remember, the main aim is to get our music spread and downloaded easily, fast and with a high efficience rate, and that is why the Piolet team is open to any questions you might want to address us.