uTorrent -- A Tiny, Powerful BitTorrent Client
Posted on Thursday, March 16, 2006 at 9:55 PM by Randall
If you think of peer-to-peer file sharing at all, you probably think of it in connection with downloading music. While this is frought with copyright issues, a number of major companies and open source projects with huge files to provide for download (and the huge bandwidth bills associated with providing large files over the Internet) have turned to a different type of peer-to-peer file-sharing to share the bandwidth: the BitTorrent protocol. BitTorrent allows everyone downloading the file at one time to share the bandwidth load by allowing others to download parts of the file they already have. With enough people downloading at once -- as often happens right after a new version of a popular software program is released -- some amazing download speeds can be had at only a small cost in bandwidth to any individual downloader.
There are a number of BitTorrent clients available for Windows, when I need a BitTorrent client, I use uTorrent. It's a tiny program (less than 200K), low resourse usage so it doesn't impact everything else you are trying to do on your computer, and while it lots of features, it is still very easy to use. If you come across a site with a BitTorrent download and need a client, don't panic or decide you really didn't want the program after all as uTorrent is a quick download that will have you downloading the file you want in no time at all. You don't even have to install uTorrent, just download it and run it. Best of all, uTorrent is under contant development, but most releases are free of major bugs -- something few developers can claim.
Major features at a glance (from the uTorrent web site):
* Multiple simultaneous downloads
* Configurable bandwidth scheduler
* Global and per-torrent speed limiting
* Quick-resumes interrupted transfers
* RSS Downloader
* Trackerless support (Mainline DHT)
Rating: 5
Operating System: Windows
License:
Freeware
Price: Free
Web Site: http://www.utorrent.com/
See
Screenshots