Bit Torrents

[ehyouwhat]

Hi all,

I know nothing about downloading music. The most complicated thing I ever do with regards to downloading tracks is use limewire, which tends to work alright for me. However, friends tell me that I should be using "Bit Torrents" or something - they say there is far more choice and that I can download whole albums at once.

So, Idiots guide anyone? How do I go about using this system, and is it really better than using Limewire?

[ThePassenger]

ehyouwhat said:

Hi all,

I know nothing about downloading music. The most complicated thing I ever do with regards to downloading tracks is use limewire, which tends to work alright for me. However, friends tell me that I should be using "Bit Torrents" or something - they say there is far more choice and that I can download whole albums at once.

So, Idiots guide anyone? How do I go about using this system, and is it really better than using Limewire?

Limewire and co. Tend to have a lot of spyware and generally will attempt to infect you with everything known to man.
Bittorrent, whilst not being 'clean' as far as the downloads go does tend to have 'good' clients.

To torrent you'll need a site that provides the initial .torrent file (this tells your client where to go for the initial connection) and a BitTorrent client. Feed one to the other, sit back, wait.

[Nismo'D]

Gotta disagree with using Azureus, big pile of poo and too heavily reliant on Java, instead use uTorrent (www.utorrent.com) a much smaller footprint all around and easy to use.

Torrentspy, www.thepiratebay.org or www.mininova.org are a couple of sites to visit.

[arcturus]

I prefer BitComet myself. www.bitcomet.com

[ThePassenger]

euroboy said:

Nismo'D said:

Gotta disagree with using Azureus, big pile of poo and too heavily reliant on Java, instead use uTorrent (www.utorrent.com) a much smaller footprint all around and easy to use.

Torrentspy, www.thepiratebay.org or www.mininova.org are a couple of sites to visit.

each to their own i guess, Ive never had a problem with Azureus. As it goes, I think pirate bay is crap, the torrents are often broken or the files themselves corrupted.

Oddly enough never had a problem TPB nor with corrupted downloads.

I use Azureus heavily, principally because it is a Java application and doesn't require a graphics output (it will, on Linux run with just a console)... I've got it set up to use the web frontend which allows me to control it and I just wget/sftp .torrent files to the right area (or let RSS feeds supply me). However on an adhoc desktop system no, a heavy weight app like Azureus is probably overkill.

[ehyouwhat]

Thanks everyone. Got it all working now.