Check out Napigator, a freeware program that's useful on both counts. Napigator runs its own servers (called opennap servers), and when you open the program, it gives you a list of servers to choose from, including ping times from where you are, as well as how full the servers are at any given moment. It also lists all the Napster servers and will connect you to them as well, but Napster has disallowed the folks at Napigator from listing Napster's server stats - you'll just see the Napster server names, no ping times or other information about them. You can surf servers if you like, tracking down that elusive mp3 or to find the server that some of the people on your hotlist are on. Once you connect through Napigator, Napster automatically opens, only you're on the server of your choice, not whichever one Napster arbitarily threw you onto. Very useful if you finally did find that file you were looking for, because if you get disconnected for some reason, you can reconnect to the same server and get the file. It won't let you resume a broken file transfer, but it's still a big step in the right direction. And even if Napster loses its court case, the other nap servers will still be around, so you won't be bereft of good mp3 servers.

You can download Napigator here. To find out more about Napigator go to www.napigator.com.