Software Review: BitTorrent Clients -UTorrent

Jan 6th, 2008 | By Bill Vincent | Category: Technology

utorrent

Now that our hosting issues have been resolved, now we can get on with life as usual. Namely, the promised BitTorrent client review.

Once I figured out the ASCII code for a “µ”, I was ready to start the review on µTorrent. (it’s 230, for those of you interested in such things). µTorrent bills itself on it’s size (small) resource-friendliness, and configurability.

Acquisition and Installation

I downloaded all 225k of version 1.7.5 from the µTorrent website. 1.7.5 is compatible with all Windows versions from 95 through Vista, as well as Wine. The installer runs smoothly, but is quite odd, in my opinion. In order to stay small, the exe runs independent of a vast library of DLL’s and such. The directory it creates in \program files\ contains only the aforementioned exe. It also creates a data folder in \documents and Settings\. There is no program group created in the start menu, but it does give you the options of a desktop icon, quicklaunch icon, and a shortcut at the top of the ‘all programs’ menu. .torrent files are automatically associated with the program.

Features and Use

On first run, you’re presented with the Speed Guide. In this settings box, you are prompted to select your connection type so the program can set upload speeds as well as maximum connections. You can also play with the numerous connection types to tweak the settings until the upload cap is to your liking to allow for other bandwidth-using apps. There is also an integrated speed test (from dslreports.com) and a applet to test router port forwarding, as well as a checkbox to enable encryption if you’re at the mercy of one of the ISP’s involved in “traffic shaping” by throttling P2P clients.

µTorrent has no built-in search function, but simply typing “torrents” into Google will instantly (okay, in 0.09 seconds) yield 38 million hits allowing you to find a torrent for virtually anything. Including copyrighted material. Watch yourselves:) Alternately, you can simply paste the URL of the torrent file into µtorrent and the program does the rest. Making up for the lack of a search function, there’s something better: µTorrent supports RSS feeds. Many .torrent sites are now offering torrents via RSS, and µTorrent takes full advantage of this.

Once a torrent is loaded, the features available are numerous. If you’re not into tweaking, all default options are perfectly adequate. However, each torrent can have it’s own upload/download caps, be set to start right off, or just load up and wait for your click. You also can view all files contained in the package, and uncheck portions you don’t want to download, the specify a program to automatically open the file once download is complete.

In preferences, you can give µTorrent a schedule for limiting bandwidth usage depending on the time of day, specify folders for downloaded files, adjust how queued files are handled, proxy settings, globally enforced bandwidth limits, several display settings, and change languages, of wish over 50 are available. Azerbaijani, anyone?

Torrent file creation is simple, add your file or directory, paste in the tracker (if you have one ready) click the button. As I said in the previous review, each torrent site has different rules for making your torrent available to the public.

Overall, µTorrent seems slick and well-built, The bandwidth usage graph is interesting, as is the plethora of info available on the peers you’re getting from and sending to. Country of origin, client, IP, and more. One interesting tidbit, at least 70%, perhaps more, of the peers I connected to while downloading a 3.3 gig ISO of Fedora were using µtorrent or Azureus, the subject of our next review.

System Friendliness and Uninstallation

CPU usage was…present. I watched it for a few minutes, and it hovered from 0 to 1% most of the time, but spiked as high as 7% at times, but only briefly. I had only 3 torrents active at any one time. This could become an issue if you’re using the client hard. Memory usage at the highest was around 25,000K, much less than BitLord.

There is no uninstaller. If you’re done with the client, you must manually remove the shortcuts, folder in \program files\, as well as the data folder under \documents and settings\. Benefit of this is that there are no registry entries or huge mystery files inhabiting \windows\system\.

Pros: Nice interface, RSS support, lots of features

Cons: No uninstaller, no integrated search function. Possible CPU-hog

[tags]P2P, µTorrent, BitTorrent, RSS, software[/tags]

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Viewing 5 Comments

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    • v
    I don't know if it's the torrent for mandriva linux, or the client, but good god, is it fast! I used BitLord to d/l some other linux distros (never used a BT client before, i was wondering what the fuss was about. But this, now this is worth fussing over!
    • ^
    • v
    I've used a number of torrent clients and find µTorrent to be the best. Prior to it I used Azureus for 2 years, but it had 2 distinct problems: 1) memory usage would creep up slowly over time, often hitting 200mb, and 2) pausing a torrent and restarting seemed to lose connection to most of the seeds (it would sometimes take hours to resume a connection at the same speeds). I pored over the settings but couldn't find anything to resolve it.

    µTorrent has neither of these problems - on a few occasions its memory usage will hit 20mb, but it usually stays at 10mb or below, and pausing and restarting a torrent seems to have no effect on the connections. I haven't tried the RSS feature, but I have used the web interface, which works great once any firewall permissions are resolved. It was cool to be in one location and to load a torrent at home.
    • ^
    • v
    I've used a number of torrent clients and find µTorrent to be the best. Prior to it I used Azureus for 2 years, but it had 2 distinct problems: 1) memory usage would creep up slowly over time, often hitting 200mb, and 2) pausing a torrent and restarting seemed to lose connection to most of the seeds (it would sometimes take hours to resume a connection at the same speeds). I pored over the settings but couldn't find anything to resolve it.

    µTorrent has neither of these problems - on a few occasions its memory usage will hit 20mb, but it usually stays at 10mb or below, and pausing and restarting a torrent seems to have no effect on the connections. I haven't tried the RSS feature, but I have used the web interface, which works great once any firewall permissions are resolved. It was cool to be in one location and to load a torrent at home.
    • ^
    • v
    On my version of 1.7.5, there is a search bar in the top right hand corner, with a magnifying glass next to it. If you click just below the magnifying glass there is a drop down menu of torrent search engines that you may like to use.

    Another cool feature of this client is that you can set it to autoload a bunch of torrents from a certain directory on start up, and have it shift completed torrents to another directory, for, errr completed torrents I assume. I don't use the autoload feature myself, but i still think its pretty cool.

    Another thing I like is the ratio column which indicates how well you have been sharing the torrent with others, if you don't happen to sit and watch it all the time.
    • ^
    • v
    Thanks for the heads-up on the search box, don't know how I missed it:) I've kept playing with it since posting the article, and I've run across a couple more handy little things. This is looking to me like the cream of the crop, Azureus is still to come, but I'm hearing some nightmare stories about its resource usage. With as many things as I run at one time, that will be a killer.

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