Ares Gold was designed from the start to stand out from the other versions of Ares. The result is a very graphically rich and pleasing look and feel.

Many other features that you will have come to expect from filesharing applications are present, with a very basic but functional media player, a nice library function that allows you to keep track of the files you download, multiple simultaneous downloads, and the ability to keep searching the network for faster downloads while you're in the middle of downloading a file.

What we liked

The interface looks very sexy indeed, with the buttons looking clean and fresh; even the font for the text used on the interface has been carefully chosen, blends in really well, and looks find of funky. It really is aesthetically pleasing, and we like the look a lot.

The little media player contained in Ares Gold works quite nicely, and although it is very basic, it doesn't suffer the same annoying jumping and skipping problems that plague a few of the other Ares implementations � we don't think it will replace your current media player, though.

What we didn't like

Like many things in life, looks are not everything. Approach a beautiful, stunning, elegant girl with a lovely smile, great body, and magical laugh, and you may find she's a shallow shell eaten up and rotten inside. Ares Gold is that girl. She looks great, and on first glance it's easy to see why you might want to spend the rest of your life with her, but as soon as you start using her as she's designed, you realise that the beauty is skin deep. Eventually you'll start looking around for another girl that actually works.

If you can get the program to start downloading files without losing your temper, then you're a better person than us. The beautiful interface is slow and frustrating, the download selection process infuriating, and the setting of any options largely impossible.

Additionally, the program doesn't seem to work well with some versions of Windows with security settings being a major bugbear in getting anything to work � unless you're experienced with the advanced settings on your implementation of windows, then we suspect that you will be crying with frustration in under an hour.

When we got more than three downloads running simultaneously we couldn't access anything else on the internet, and our other applications stopped responding. While this could be solved by only accessing a couple of downloads at once, it is unusual behaviour which doesn't affect other versions of Ares to the same extent.

Using Ares Gold simply because it looks nice is a huge mistake. Examining the software on its other merits shows quite quickly that this is NOT a version of Ares that we can recommend.