Bittorrent Series Part 1 of 4: Choosing the right torrent client

I'll be writing a four part series this week that will address our favorite source for everything digital. Torrents! If your not already familiar with what a torrents are and how they work click here!

Torrents are a bit of a gray area when it comes to the theft of intellectual property and without going into a heated debate, I will say that this series is for educational purposes and warn users that unauthorized downloading of licensed software can lead to criminal investigation and up to a $250,000 fine.

Many of you have used torrents for years now and have settled on a bittorrent client that you feel pretty comfortable with. Though at some point you may have asked yourself "why is my computer running so slow when I'm downloading, how can I prevent my torrents from messing with my roommates internet speed, and whats all this talk about my torrent downloading being monitored?"

Whether your plagued by these issues or not, we all face the tedious task of searching for a virus free legitimate file that will offer optimal download speeds. Ill be addressing this equally troubling issue later in part 3.

Part 1: Choosing the right torrent client

When choosing a bittorrent client I follow 3 basic criteria:

• Is it small and does it consume the least amount of resources.
• Can I configure my torrent port usage and download speed.
• Does it have an IP Filter.

Although the last two are very important, don't worry about what these mean for now. I'll be addressing those in part two: configuring torrent clients.

Utorrent is a great torrent client out of the bunch. I've used it for a couple years now and it fits my requirements perfectly. Unlike torrent client programs such as Vuze and Bitcomet, Utorrent is a tiny 283kbs to download and offers all the same features in a easy to navigate layout that doesn't bombard you with a huge amount of information unless you tell it to.

You can find Utorrent here: http://www.utorrent.com/

After you download utorrent, here are a few little extras to keep you busy:
http://btjunkie.org/: Great search engine for hard to find torrents
http://www.demonoid.com/: great way to discover torrent files you may have never thought of.
http://www.entertane.com/: all your favorite torrent search engines in one place.


In my next post Ill guide you through an easy to follow step by step process of how to configure Utorrent to share bandwidth with others on your network and still give you fast download speeds. I'll also explain the importance of IP filters and how literally thousands of corporations and organizations may be monitoring your torrent activity at any given moment.