14 DAY TRIAL // P2P has known great development in the last couple of years. With the increasing speeds of the Internet, every file is one bit closer to you. The applications used back in the days have all fallen in disgrace as they did not offer what the user really needed: a continuous download flow.
Most of the times your download depended on the person(s) at the other end. If s/he turned the computer down, the download would stop. Not anymore. With torrents, you can benefit from a continuous, uninterrupted download (if there are enough seeders and leechers).
Although there are many torrent downloaders out there, only few of them find their place on the users' computers. I have to admit that I did not play too much with these software contraptions and limited myself to using BitComet, Azureus and ?Torrent. And I gave up on them in the exact same mentioned order.
?Torrent comes in a lightweight pack of only 218KB and needs no installation to help you into getting down your files, so if you suddenly decide to get rid of it all you have to do is erase the executable. The tiny app has a very good sense of order as the interface is split into well defined areas containing the download list as well as the tasks specific for each activity.
The application is famous for the list of options it makes available. From this point of view, ?Torrent proves to be extremely flexible and an average user would find everything s/he needs and more. Each torrent download can be imposed download and upload limits. If you are worried about the bandwidth used by the application, you can restrict the overall D/U leaving room for web browsing and other Internet related activities.
Download/upload limitation option comes very handy when you want to efficiently control your download tasks. Prioritizing your downloads, a feature present in most torrent managers, is available in ?Torrent as well. A task can be set to High, Normal or Low bandwidth and according to this it'll complete sooner or later than the others.
In the lower part of the application window, right under download tasks window there is the information section for each of the downloads. The tabs available contain all the information you need about the selected task. In General there is information regarding the transfer (total time elapsed, download/upload size, number of seeds available, ETA to completion, download/upload speed, share ratio, D/U limitations), tracker (URL, status, DHT status and update) and general information (save location, size of the file, torrent creation date, hash, comment, number of pieces and size).
Information section of ?Torrent is not restricted only to this. You can also see the peers you are downloading from and those you are seeding to. The files contained by the torrent are extracted and available under Files tab. You can assign a priority level or even cross them out from the download list.
But the fun is just beginning, as the preferences section covers a whole set of different options and features just waiting to be activated. The application can be set to start in system tray with Windows, automatically check for updates or show the speed limits in status bar. So you can get all the essential information on a task just by taking a look at the interface of the application.
If you hate setting a location for saving the files every time you add a torrent, the "torment" can be ended by simply setting a folder for all the downloads. The user can separate the current tasks from the completed ones by moving the latter into a whole new location. Pre-allocation of space has always been my favorite option as it allows disk space allocation before the download is complete. This way you make sure there will not be any space problems during the download and have an accurate information on how much disk you have left for other tasks.
Connectivity is essential when it comes to torrent downloads as it allows you do your bidding. But you should show some appreciation by sharing the file with others. ?Torrent provides a default port for incoming connection, but if you are behind a router, this may not work too well. The Speed Guide under Options menu makes a test to see if the port is working properly and if the result is negative then you need to forward it. The operation is quite simple and you will find quite comprehensive guides on the web.
The flexibility of this tiny app stretches to managing the number of connections, enabling DHT network, local peer discovering and even limiting local peer bandwidth. These settings are essential if you want to download your files and still be able to browse the Internet with no problems.
Another extraordinary feature sported by ?Torrent is the scheduler. Not too classy or elegantly looking, but it does a great job in torrent download management. The Scheduler table is composed of 168 squares each representing the hours of all the days of the weak. At the bottom there is the legend and lower there are the limitations for upload and download. To set it up all you have to do is click once on the right square to enable speed limitation, twice to schedule a turn off and thrice to allow full speed. Hovering the mouse over the green field will cause a display of the time under the scheduler table.
For those interested in remote controlling ?Torrent, Web UI has been implemented for quite a while. It'll will display a lite version of your running ?Torrent in a web browser. You can add new torrent downloads with absolutely no problem. All you need to do is type in the right address and port (http://YourIP:UTport/gui/). However, it will not work without WebUI plugin which has to be placed in a special ?Torrent directory. To find it simply type in Run "%AppData%uTorrent".
?Torrent proves to be a reliable and flexible torrent manager. Highly configurable, the application is easy to use. It needs no installation as it can run directly from the 218KB executable. WebUI is a great addition for the application as it allows you to remotely control ?Torrent via a web browser.
The Good
Very flexible options and configuration. ?Torrent is lightweight (with two tasks in progress it took about 15MB of RAM). The application is highly customizable and easy to set up.
The search bar in the top right hand corner can be customized and the user can create his/her own list of search engines.
The Bad
Preferences window is not resizable and it is a bit difficult to append the link for a new search engine. When adding too many torrent tasks, your computer will slow down a bit.
The Truth
...is that everybody employs it for illegal download and there are too few trackers that provide legal files (BitTorrent is one of them). However, ?Torrent does a great job at handling the downloads and is not a resource hog as it tries to keep CPU and RAM to the minimum.
?Torrent is one of those programs that work no matter the environment they have to face. From what I have heard, it runs quite well in Windows 95 and 98 and some guy told me that on a 486 it is not too shy either. But hey, this is 2007 and it is enough to know that it runs smooth on XP and Vista.
Here are some uTorrentshots of the application in action:
