Torrent Swapper, Exchange Torrent Files with Your Fellow Peers

very good
key review info
application features
  • Recommended downloads list
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With the passing of time, more and more torrent clients have emerged on the market. At one point, I thought that there is no room for something better, but the next week I was already using the newly released ?Torrent which rapidly made its way to the top place of my favorite torrent clients list.

It seems that a new preference has made its way to users' computers in what concerns the P2P file sharing based on Bittorent protocol. The name is Torrent Swapper and judging by the number of downloads all over the world, it would seem that it imposed a new standard regarding the features such a tool should come with.

Just like the name suggests, the application aims at helping you exchange torrent files with others. For this to happen there must be a community. Up until Torrent Swapper appeared on the market, peer communities would gather around one torrent website providing the much addictive torrent files necessary for downloading the goodies. With Torrent Swapper, the community is built around the application itself.

Torrent Swapper comes with a simple, user friendly interface which does not seem to offer too much. The toolbar contains all main options available in the software. Users can easily add a new torrent to download window, view details on the job, start the task, stop, pause or remove it, move it up and down in the window, manage the peers in the community, view torrent recommendations, access your personal details or start a torrent search.

There is almost nothing unusual in these options except for download recommendations and friends management. These are the new additions unavailable in any other major torrent clients. Recommended downloads list gathers torrents already downloaded by the members of the community you connected to. Some of them are rated according to their preference and are similar to the files you are downloading. With a simple right click you can delete the recommendation or add it to the download list. The second option in this double tabbed window is displaying your download history. Here you can rate the downloaded files or mark them as a fake. The more users employ this option the more are the chances to avoid faze files and download only top rated items.

Torrent Swapper does not stop at this. You can also make some friends over the network and add them to a list. All peers you connected to during a download job are listed in the application together with their details (name and IP). Additional information refers to the time it was last seen, connectivity and files exchanged. You can add them to the list of friends and edit their credentials (name, IP, communicating port, PermID). If you have a picture of the friend you can add it to his/her name for a faster recognition (supported image formats include BMP, GIF, PNG, JPG, ICO, PNM, PCX or TIF).

Main application window displays all the information you need regarding the jobs in progress. You will have the title of the torrent, progress percentage, download/upload speed, ETA for finishing the task, size of the job, upload/download ratio and priority of the task.

The context menu for the job is quite rich, providing options for managing the download process, setting the priority (Highest, High, Normal, Low and Lowest), change download destination, get access to torrent details, make the settings for the currently selected torrent job and scraping the latest report on the number of seeds and peers.

Controlling the download/upload speed of each job can be done from the Local Settings of this menu. Here you can set the limit for the maximum number of uploads, fix upload/download rate, and make the settings for when the download completes (set the time of continuing the upload).

Torrent Details option has some features you haven't seen in other torrent clients. Users will benefit from a map providing geographic info on peers and seeds. Depending on the number of seeds, it will be populated with red dots representing your uploaders. Hovering the mouse pointer over them will cause the display of additional information on the seeder: IP, resident country, city, geographic coordinates, amount of downloaded data as well as uploaded and the completion level of the file it seeds you.

Network Info tab provides details on the peers and seeds to which you connect, their IP, download speed, number of copies available, connected seeds and peers, total speed of the job, port used for the transfer and total amount of completed download. In the lower part of the window, you will learn about the total number of pieces available for completing the task, failed hash checks or number of pieces that were partially retrieved.

Information about torrent includes info hash, number of pieces and encoding type as well as announced URL, tracker, date of torrent creation and program used to create the file.

Torrent Swapper comes with an almost complete list of settings necessary for this type of software. Preferences include options for limiting global download/upload rate, file upload control, torrent management when active torrents are not connecting to the source, reduce priorities according to timeouts. Network settings allow changing the port (requires restarting the software), kick or ban clients that send bad data, restrict multiple connections from the same IP and retrieve scrape data.

All jobs can be saved wherever you want, but for organized users, Torrent Swapper provides an option for defining a default location. Just like in other P2P softwares, it provides a chance to define a folder for incomplete tasks and the moment they finish they can be automatically moved to a different location.

Pre-allocation of space for a running job is also possible and the files can be locked during writing. These two features ensure that a running job will have the necessary space for writing and do not run the risk of being erased from disk by mistake before completion.

Additional options encountered in Torrent Swapper permit context menu customization (in Preferences menu, under Display settings) set the color codes for connections and tray minimization options. Configuring it is not such a difficult job and it should not take more than a couple of minutes to complete it.

The application comes with a complete set of features that would make most BitTorrent clients blush. However, during our testing, Torrent Swapper failed to establish connections with BitTorrent tracker and overall download speeds were most disappointing. Testing the files and connections to their trackers with a different client resulted in much higher speeds. Further tests revealed that the application could gain more download speed but it could not equal its competition (other clients reached speeds of 100KB in about 10 seconds while Torrent Swapper needed about 30 seconds to stabilize at almost half that rate).

Some trackers may not agree on this BitTorrent client and this was also my assumption when it did not download from BitTorrent tracker. So using it may cause some problems. In some cases, you will get the message in the main window while other times there may be no hint at all on this.

The Good

It comes with a trailer of options and configuration settings which is very impressive for such an early version. Download/Upload can be configured both globally as well as individually for each torrent job with no hassle at all.

Torrent Swapper creates a community of users ready to provide you with their preferences in torrent downloading. You can make the settings for pre-allocating space for the jobs and locking the files for protection against accidental deletion.

The Bad

Jobs cannot be scheduled to start or stop according to a user-defined timetable. Download speeds were quite low considering the bandwidth available.

Torrent search is inflexible and contains too few options (only five engines with no possibility of enlarging the list). During our testing, Torrent Swapper could not connect to BitTorrent tracker and there are multiple trackers that do not support the application.

You are not given the number of seeds and peers toy are connected to, only the total number of seeders and peers you can connect to.

The Truth

Feature-wise, Torrent Swapper is extremely gifted, but it has connectivity problems as during our tests, download and upload speeds were quite low. Another issue is that not all trackers may support this client and you may not be able to complete the jobs.

Considering that this is an early version of the application there is time for making all the necessary improvements. It is a promising start which brings the novelty of community building around a BitTorrent client rather than a tracker. It would be nice though to be able to communicate with the members of the community.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

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user interface 4
features 4
ease of use 5
pricing / value 4


final rating 4
Editor's review
very good
 
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