I’m a practical woman and it is rare if ever that I get sentimental about some object or thing. If it doesn’t work then it belongs in the bin. If it has been superseded by some superior model then it belongs in the bin. So I surprised myself somewhat with my reluctance to do away with Ares Galaxy, the P2P filesharing software, despite overwhelming evidence that it was no longer the leader of the pack. Eventually my practical side won over and I have replaced the old application with Ares Vista.

It was always the case that Ares Galaxy was the best available filesharing program, and all others were mere imitations. As happens so often with these kind of things the imitations quickly matured to become better than the original. The original – Ares Galaxy – manages to live off its reputation and name for a while but ultimately gets caught out.

It’s not that Ares Galaxy is bad, it’s just that some of the newer crop of ‘imitations’ – Ares Vista, Ares Ultra and Ares Ultimate – are so much more useful, reliable, quicker and, well better. There are attempts to drag the Ares model back to where it was before Ares Galaxy took over: avoid Ares Destiny and Ares Gold at all costs. These are not good pieces of software.