In my extensive e-travels looking for new and interesting freeware to share with my readers, I occasionally stumble across a piece of software whose very homepage has me hooked. This is why I am taking a look at QNext v2.3.2 this week. QNext is an all-in-one program for universal instant messaging, streaming music, sharing files, photos, and playing games. Intrigued? I was.
The installer will install the program itself and its requisite support files. You can choose to install an extra to support audio and video devices, and I did.
The first run took a moment to load and initialize, then told me I needed an update file. I felt this was odd because I had just downloaded the program, but it took only a moment to grab a small update file and restart QNext. The program then prompted me to create an account (name and password) for QNext and its services. It will ask you for an email for password retrieval, but you can check the box to not share or publish the address. I used a junk e-mail account just to be safe. Lastly, QNext will ask you to volunteer personal details, but you can skip those screens and you’ll be all set. The program will register your information and launch the main client.
As a universal IM client, QNext lets you use AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! and MSN all within a single program. Simply add your screen name and password and your buddy list appears. I noticed that my groupings within AIM were not preserved; there were just two lists for online and offline users. When you’re connected to multiple clients at once, the icon next to your friends’ screen names will reflect the client they are currently using. IRC is also supported as an included plug-in. Similar to any IRC client, see my review of mIRC, you can enter your preferred server and nickname, perform commands to perhaps login to a server if needed, connect to a preferred channel automatically, set DCC file sharing options, logs and display options.
The uniqueness of QNext though lies in the content sharing and community extras. Using the included QNext browser, you can access options called “Zones”. QNext users will be able to see these zones listed under your screen name and can access them if you allow it. A note on the browser, which can be hidden behind your buddy list: It works only for QNext services, not the entire internet. Let’s take a closer look at the major zones.
File sharing lets you share any folders of any size. You can choose if users can download, upload, or even erase the files. Simply browse to the folder, set the options for who can see it (public, all friends, certain names or private) and you’re done.
Expanding on this is the photo sharing. Following the included wizard, you can create custom albums or simply use a folder on your computer. Then choose a quality level (resolution 640×480 to limitless). You can also enable some digital rights management to protect your photos by adding a watermark and blocking high quality downloads. Finally, name the zone and provide a description, and just like with files, select the desired users. The Photo zone will load the album thumbnails in the browser on the right and a viewer with zoom, rotate, and browse controls in the center.
Next, you can share you music with similar setups as the other zones. The key option here is that you can choose to re-encode your music into 64Kbps for less bandwidth intense streaming, or leave the music at the original quality. Clicking on a friend’s music zone opens a jukebox player in the QNext browser window that looks very similar to iTunes with basic playing and browsing options.
Lastly, there are zones for group chat and games such as chess, checkers, Othello, backgammon and poker.
Another big feature of QNext is called QNextMyPC. This lets you connect to your computer remotely via the web, provided your home computer is on, connected, and running QNext. This remote access is also useful for the photo, file or music sharing. Keep a copy of QNext on your laptop, or USB drive and grab your homework or listen to your tunes at school, work or wherever your travels take you.
QNext has plenty of other extras and options that I won’t go into here, but I was impressed at how thorough and well-made the program is. It is definitely worth checking out, not only as an all-in-one IM program, but for all the extras it offers. If you like it, be sure to tell a friend, because you get so much more out of QNext if your buddies use it too. You can grab the 32MB download at www.qnext.com
Like what you read?
If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:
