BitTorrent Clients Reviewed 484
prostoalex writes "PC Magazine is running a review of several popular BitTorrent clients. They review uTorrent, an app that 'packs an outstanding array of features in 107KB, and doesn't even create a folder in your Program Files' and give it 4.5 stars. BitTorrent Client from BitTorrent.com, 'whose clean interface has three basic elements: a large progress bar for each torrent you're working on, a slider that controls your maximum upload rate, and a link to the BitTorrent Search engine', gets 4 stars. BitPump 'features an attractive interface that sacrifices a detailed feature set for BitTorrent tweakers in favor of simplicity and ease of use' and gets 4 stars. Finally, Azureus, 'a favorite with advanced users, who enjoy its plug-in system and huge range of tweakable settings', gets 4.5 stars. An interview with Bram Cohen from BitTorrent is available as well."
BitComet anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
4 stars for everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
kind of short... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish that they had discovered that there were a few more than that; ABC, BitCommet, BitTornado, etc... Especially since clients like BitCommet and BitTorrent have some features not posesses by the ones covered there.
Idiot (Score:3, Insightful)
Bittorrent lets people without a lot of bandwidth get their data distributed, it just happens that some people want to distribute stuff they don't own.
Re:Azureus (Score:4, Insightful)
I do, as long as you have a fast ass mac. I have a dual 2.5 g5 and it runs well, but on my 450mhz single g4 you coudln't run anything else at the same time and not have tons of drawn out pinwheels. Then again, most things sucked wind on that old heap. Thats why I stuck 3 hard drives in it and made it my fileserver which it excels at, but I digress. Azureus also tons of great plugins, the coolest is the one that can scan an rss feed for your search terms and automatically add torrents for say, your favorite TV show, er I mean legal linux distro. Also I don't know what it is called, upnp i think, but it configures your cable/dsl router for you if you want it to.
Azureus basically rules. I haven't even gotten into half of the things it can do... I am never quite sure if I am spelling it right though.
The author is a noob. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:BitComet anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also of note, many people have replied and likely will continue to reply with propaganda that BitComet doesn't work with many "private trackers". This is laughable for a couple reasons.
First, BitComet's most recent release made this complaint irrelevant (clients don't identify).
Second, DHT networking is a truly peer to peer protocol meaning you are slightly safer with your illegal downloading from the autorities. DHT is used as a secondary downloading method, if say the tracker goes down.
Which leads to the third laughable reason, this pisses off "private trackers" because they don't get to keep stats on you (you think those stats are going to help you or hurt you?). Sure that's a little fucked up if you are "cheating" on ratios but guess what? These private trackers only exist to download illegal software, porn and media. These are hypocrites trying to make a _moral_ arguement about the use of bittorrent. Please join me in laughing these idiots off the internet. thx
Re:Azureus (Score:3, Insightful)
Azureus, now bloat free! (Score:4, Insightful)
Ugh, that's annoying. (Score:5, Insightful)
Once again, using BitTorrent in and of itself is not in the least bit illegal. Of course, neither is using a VCR to tape a television show. However, a huge number of people use BitTorrent to share materials that are copyrighted. The array is vast, from MP3s to first-run movies, and even entire seasons of TV shows zipped up into a single large file. And once again (say it with us), downloading copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder is illegal.
Replace BitTorrent with http, ftp or the web and you see how tiresome this kind of comment is. A huge number of people die driving. A huge number of people are murdered with pointy pieces of steel. A large number of people might not give the world's big publishers their money, with or without another internet protocol. The vast majority of musicians get ripped off.
Let me see if I can say it clearly. Sharing with your friends is not dirty. Cooperative systems add value.
People in the non free world just don't get it and covet all the wrong things. The value of source code is much greater than that of a binary file. The value of a live performance is much greater than a recording. A movie is worth about four dollars. What he values is something that's dead, things with greedy owners. The value of the internet is the exchange of free information, not dead stuff.
I've got a closet full of old crap he might consider valuable. I've got CDs, albums and tapes, which were worthless to me until I ripped them and stuck them on an sftp server. I've got shelves of DOS, Win3.1, Win95 and Windoze 98 software, all good for painful installations on obsolete hardware. The actual content made has been moved to free software systems when I was no longer able to access it with non free software. I keep it, some old books and even a working system or two around like museum pieces. The cost of replacement for my non free software is about 1 hour of install and download time, or a $500 trip to CompUSA. Mobility adds value to information and exposes the true value of non free information.
Will I use bt to share music and movies? Sure, if they are free. Those that are free are worth much more than those I can't share.
Do I share my own work? You bet I do.
Re:A vote for uTorrent (Score:5, Insightful)
If anyone knows of software as astonishingly lightweight as uTorrent, for other tasks, I don't think it's all too far offtopic to post it. And if it is, to hell with the moderators, this is the kind of softare news we should care about.
Re:Port forwarding (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Port forwarding (Score:3, Insightful)
Also I know variety is the spice of life and all that, but why does anyone on Windows use anything other than Utorrent? When I hear about people using XXXX client like Azerus etc, they sound like users who think IE is best but haven't ever heard about Firefox.
The point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Will I use bt to share music and movies? Sure, if they are free.
Free as in speech, or free as in beer? If it's the latter, it's copyright infringement - meaning taht, yes, "Sharing with your friends" is, indeed, "dirty."
Those [music and movies] that are free are worth much more than those I can't share.
Of course they are. That doesn't make sharing them legal, nor right. If they're "too expensive", don't buy them and let the free market do it's work.
A jumbo jet is also more valuable than a ticket to ride on one. It's just that it's harder to "infringe" the jet than it is a copyright.
sharing is good (Score:4, Insightful)
If I can't share it with my friends, it's not free.
If it's the latter, it's copyright infringement - meaning taht, yes, "Sharing with your friends" is, indeed, "dirty."
You asking me not to share with my friends is the dirty part and a good enough reason to avoid your work. A library is not dirty. A few copies are not a republication. The end of physical media is going to be difficult for people who think they own ideas because they put them on dead trees. Copyright has gone far beyond it's original intention and purpose of promoting the sciences and useful arts. People who insist that sharing is dirty should be shunned.
Re:Ugh, that's annoying. (Score:2, Insightful)
His paragraph is warning any new potential bittorrent users that the vast majority of stuff on bittorrent is copyrighted. (Which is true.) That if you download it you may get sued. (Also true.) So download these things at your own risk. (Good advice, people should be aware of what they are getting in to.)
It has nothing to do with legal file sharing or sharing with your buddies because in reality thats just not what most people are coming on to bittorrent to do.
I get the feeling, from your clear view of MS and closed source, youve just taken this as an excuse to rant about what a grand old place the world would be if everyone shared everything.
Re:Congrats! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hrm...troll indeed? Alright, I'll bite. I'm aware of BitTorrent's excellent ability to copy information, but I'd never heard of a case where someone used it to steal something. How would you go about that?
Bear in mind-stealing involves taking away from or depriving(requirement 1) the rightful owner of a possession, of that possession(requirement 2) without that person's consent(requirement 3).
Even if we presume true (and many do not) the tenuous arguments that the person whose file the computer resides on is not "really" the rightful owner of the data on it, and doesn't have permission to say what may or may not be done with it, only requirement 2 and 3 are satisfied. Requirement 1 is never met-copying something doesn't involve taking it away.
Now, on the other hand, you might have mistakenly referred to copyright infringement as theft. Many (though not all) uses for Bittorrent do indeed meet its definition. But I'm sure no one around here tries to substitute an incorrect, inflammatory word for the proper term for something, thinking it strengthens their point!
Re:One little problem: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Port forwarding (Score:3, Insightful)
uPNP fixes the problem of configuring it, and is supported by most of the current crop of home routers (and, at least, Azureus). But the security nuts hate it because it does what people want it to do: It forwards ports automatically.
"Security flaw!" they shout from the rooftops. "Any program can open a port to teh Intar-Web!" they harp. "Think of the children!" they scream.
Thing is, uPNP seems to work just fine. And, personally, given the amount of trust I give to every program I run as root or Administrator, the last thing I'm worried about is whether or not it has a listening port on teh Intar-Web.
Re:One little problem: (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess if it's easier to develop such an app in Java (obviously cross platform it is) then I'd say using 2x the RAM is an OK tradeoff. Not an order of magnitude.
Re:Like Azureus? I think you'll love uTorrent (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, god, please kill yourself for saying that.
A jumbo jet is also more valuable than a ticket to ride on one.
So which is more valuable, a passenger on a jumbo jet or the jumbo jet? I'm sure since you couldn't get the parent post's concept you'll go for the hunk of metal.
Re:One little problem: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Congrats! (Score:3, Insightful)
The RAR client they list for Windows is only a "trial" version, and is only available in a command line version on Linux and Mac OS X. I sent them feedback a month ago to add MT-Newswatcher for Mac OS (9 & X) which is great and free, but they have not added it. Several demo/payware products are listed. Their listing includes "Votes" with the highest number for the Mac newsreaders being 2, and some zero! I wonder if they tested any of them.
I also saw no info on
With plenty of excellent free software out there for Linux and Mac OSes, it's a major omission to include so little.
Re:The point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't for a second believe that the market for music and movies is a "free market." At the very least it is dominated by one gynormous bit of government interference, generally known as the copyright monopoly. You may believe that claptrap about copyright being the only way to "promote progress in science and the arts" but don't pretend that a "free market" has anything to do with it. It is a very tightly controlled market.
Re:Azureus (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, you're not anonymous while using BitTorrent, in fact quite the opposite as you rightly point out, but the potential damage is limited compared to other p2p options and thus it's not such an appealing financial target for the content cartels. Sueing/C&D-ing the aggregator sites is probably the best approach which they seemed to follow for awhile, but since the shutdown of Suprnova 14 months ago I havn't seen any successful shutdowns involving torrent aggregators. I'd say a piracy shakeup is looming and probably overdue.
Re:Ugh, that's annoying. (Score:3, Insightful)
maybe you are confused. PC mag was reveiwing BT clients. that is all. don't read anything else into it. the fact that many (most) people use BT for illegal media distribution may be well known to you, but you are not the target reader of this article. if you need to read a review of BT client software, you probably aren't a user of it right now, otherwise, you'd already have figured that out for yourself.
also, P2P protocols in general are vastly more well suited for illegal media distribution than things like FTP. i hope i don't need to explain that.
Nice hair splitting (Score:4, Insightful)
Whatever helps you sleep at night.
Re: BitTorrent isn't criminal - get this straight (Score:2, Insightful)
It's because people like you confuse tools and acts that the French government feels it can follow the recommendations of artist organisations and push for implementations of controls in P2P tools such as BitTorrent, in the context of it's new DADVSI law projects.
I would like, here, to remind everybody who hasn't yet figured it out, that a hammer, while it can be used to kill someone by hitting them on the head hard enough, isn't considered a criminal's tool... and as such doesn't implement all kinds of ridiculous controls. Some of the users may be criminals... but there are very legitimate uses for a hammer... just as there are for BitTorrent clients.
Re:One little problem: (Score:2, Insightful)
You paid for your RAM and CPU. If you're not using them completely, you're wasting money.
If you want 20 things running at once, either adjust your resource settings, or buy more RAM.
my 2cent
Re:You were doing something wrong, then. (Score:1, Insightful)