Which Bit Torrent Client Do You Use?

[Pot Head]

Just thought this might be a helpful thread to all. Reason being there has been a few people asking for seeds on torrents when there are enough distributed copies to go around if everyone shares at least 1:1. I havent searched through all the threads here to see if there is something posted already. If I am duplicating something I aplogize. I thought also by starting this thread it might help on keeping some of these torrents around a little longer because they keep real good track on how much you are sharing and not sharing. There are probably a bunch of different clients out there but I use Bit Tornado and its pretty awesome. It has more features with it than I know what to do with. I am no computor genius and it actually took me a little while to figure out there are some different bit torrent clients out there. Like I said before hopefully this helps a few peeps out and not just a pointless thread!

[Ted]

Funny you should ask. I just downloaded BitTornado a few minutes ago. I read your post in the other thread about how it keeps track of uploads/downloads, so I thought I'd give it a try. I'm currently using Shareaza, which is crap, but it gets the job done. I can also seed with it, which is important to me, but sometimes it crashes when I kill a seed - which is another reason for trying BitTornado. I've heard Azureus is a very good client, but it crashes my firewall (Zone Alarm), and I don't feel like trying to figure out why, so I trashed that one for now.

As for sharing, I try to initially get a ratio of about 1.5 or 2 before I kill my seed unless there are no others (or few other) seeds. Sometimes I kill it at 1.0, but almost never less than that. I also try to keep an eye on the threads I downloaded from so that if someone is getting slow speeds or the seeds are gone, I'll jump in to help out. I wish I could keep all torrents I've downloaded (I don't have many) seeded, but I need my bandwidth for my server too - which is why I sometimes have to quit seeding earlier.

[Pot Head]

Cool maybe this isnt another pointless thread

[Ted]

I'm not the only noob around here . I'm sure if others join in and let us know what they use and give some reasons why, it'll help out the other noobs too. For me, Bittorrents seemed a little complicated at first, when trying to understand how they worked and about seeding. Maybe this thread will help people who are new to torrents make an informed decision as to which client to use, which is half the battle - that is if they want to get the most from the torrent "experience".

[brimstone]

Right now i'm using azureus but bitcomet is just as good for normal users. I like the fact that these clients only use a single window for all torrents, it's also easy to set the maximum up and down speed for individual torrents and they can both make torrent files.

[Bomber]

Azureus is much better if you often have more than one torrent in use and if you don't keep your PC on 24/7. When you restart it it has all the torrents "inside" as it were, whereas with Bit Tornado you have to manually open up each torrent again.

I did find Bit Tornado more useful for fine tuning torrents upload speeds individually. I have only been able to set a global upload speed in Azureus.

Azureus can be a resource hog if you have an older machine.

[Ted]

Originally Posted by Bomber

Azureus is much better if you often have more than one torrent in use and if you don't keep your PC on 24/7. When you restart it it has all the torrents "inside" as it were, whereas with Bit Tornado you have to manually open up each torrent again.

I did find Bit Tornado more useful for fine tuning torrents upload speeds individually. I have only been able to set a global upload speed in Azureus.

Azureus can be a resource hog if you have an older machine.

By manually opening up each torent again (in BitTornado), do you mean when you are seeding or when you are simply downloading? If simply downloading, then does that mean you have to start the download from the beginning? When seeding with Shareaza, and I close the client, I have to reseed again, which means that I have to wait for the program to "process" the file(s) again and it could take a few minutes to do this (an eternity for me ). I hope this isn't what you mean (fingers crossed).

I like that fact that I can fine tune the up/download speeds for the individual torrents. That's a good feature for me.

[Neilyboy]

bitcomet rocks

neil

[Evenreven]

I've used the official client and BitTornado for PC and Azureus for mac. Of these Azureus is by far my favourite - for the reasons Bomber mentioned - and I don't see any point in trying any other client.

[yesfan1]

Bitcomet is my election...

[Bomber]

Originally Posted by Ted

By manually opening up each torent again (in BitTornado), do you mean when you are seeding or when you are simply downloading? If simply downloading, then does that mean you have to start the download from the beginning? When seeding with Shareaza, and I close the client, I have to reseed again, which means that I have to wait for the program to "process" the file(s) again and it could take a few minutes to do this (an eternity for me ). I hope this isn't what you mean (fingers crossed).

I like that fact that I can fine tune the up/download speeds for the individual torrents. That's a good feature for me.

No, with Bit Tornado (or with any client for that matter) you don't have to restart from the beginning. Unless your pc crashes and you have the flush data to disc option turned off. It will usually start back up straight away without having to process the files again, both when downloading and seeding. Sometimes it seems to forget where it was and has to check the whole lot again but it only takes a minute or two.

BTW I found out how to set individual upload caps in Azareus so that's one less reason to use Bit Tornado now.

[Ted]

Sounds good Bomber, thanks. I still haven't had the chance to install Bit Tornado yet, but it's getting higher on my list of things to do.

As for Azureus, you're making it even more appealing to me, but as I stated earlier (maybe it was in another thread - I'm too lazy to go back and read my posts now ), Azureus crashes my firewall for some reason. I'd really like to give it a try someday, but I just don't feel like trying to figure out what the problem is right now (again, too lazy ). As you can probably tell, I'm a bit lazy lately, besides, I've had other things I'd rather be doing.

Plagiarizing myself from another thread:

I have recently discovered that if your router has UPnP capability, it is much better to turn that on and turn on Azureus' UPnP function, and don't bother forwarding any ports in your router. (You will still have to make sure that your WinXP firewall has an open port, however).

The reason UPnP is superior is that you don't have to mess around with port forwarding, and it's more secure than port forwarding because the ports are opened only by the application you want, and only when the application is running. Otherwise the port is closed.

I have the UPnP feature running on my router with both Azureus and BitTornado and it works great. Azureus was the easiest to deal with as it didn't require me to make any adjustments to my router (BitTornado did). You can see in the UPnP log that Azureus is using UPnP, and you can use the test feature to make sure that the port is open for Azureus. I got it working with BitTornado too, but it was a bit more tricky. But it was less work than port forwarding.

[mike1061]

A few more points about azureus.
1) When you open the program, it restates all the torrents that were working when you shut it down, from the same point you left off, and with the same stats as when you left off. (I don't know it that was clear before)
2) If you right click on a torrent that is downloading, you can select parts you do not want to download. Example: filler, you know the songs somebody stuck on the end of the disk, so the disk would be full. You can also download only a text file, like if you lost one.
3) You can set individule upload speeds, too. Again right click an active torrent.
4) You have a lot of options, as to what columns you want displayed. You are not stuck with the default settings. This can help you keep track of your torrents. Up seed, down speed, # of seeds, # of leeches, share ratio, size of torrent, eta, % done, are some of my favorites.
5) you can also right click a torrent and click remove> remove torrent and data. That means if you decide not to download a show, the folder will be empty. That way you do not wast time decoding a incomplete torrent.
Thanks Mike

[Ted]

@ uhclem - I just "replied" to your other post. Good recommendation

@ mike1061 and the others - you guys are making me think about ditching Bit Tornado before even installing it and trying to figure out why Azureus isn't working for me. Go ahead, keep posting its pros, you'll soon convince me