It is probably a generation ‘thing’ or maybe even a lack of technological skills but I have never been a huge user of BitTorrent. Truth told I would be hard pushed to give you a clear, concise explanation of what it is and why you should have it.
The fact is that ‘growing up’, todays media and computer options just didn’t exist, and even when they became available they really had that ‘xTreme Geek” tag. Not only that but you needed the patience of a saint to not only work out how to use them, but to even get anything useful downloaded to your computer. The computer just wasn’t the centre of everything fun as it is nowadays, so I sort of missed out and then could never be bothered to catch up.
Nowadays though it is hard to envisage a computer world without this functionality, especially when we look ahead to the projected amount of legitimate data sharing and downloading that we will all be doing. I have recently looked at my own data distribution and it is genuinely horrifying to consider how much digital data and information I have. I personally have 1,230GB of hard drive ‘space’ and that is running out at a very alarming rate. Streaming has to be a way forward, as does the ability to access information ‘on demand’ that isn’t necessarily held on your machine or network.
xTorrent has at least removed the technological skill deficit.
It requires zero previous knowledge or experience to set it up, so no working out which ports to use etc, has an exceptionally easy to use interface, and possibly best of all a really good search facility. Yahoo and Google by ‘default’, but it will search your own content really well.
Something that I really liked, but isn’t really to do with the product, was the pricing options. The Pro version costs $20, but for an additional $9 you get a Household Option which allows 3 other people on the same internet connection to use it. A further $9 gives you a Lifetime Upgrades Option. A very smart pricing strategy in my opinion.
So for a novice this is an excellent application and from what I have seen and heard from more experienced and advanced users it is something they rate as well. It is well worth taking a look at.
I recently purchased an Xtorrent license. I never used torrents it until seeing a screencast using Xtorrent on ScreenCastsOnline. I was interested, so I bit.
Wow. There’s a lot out there! Pretty much anything you could ask for. Not to say you should do anything inappropriate or unlawful. To test it, my favorite new TV program I just encountered is Life on Mars. What a great drama! Not seeing it here in the states, what’s a guy to do?
The Xtorrent does what it is supposed to, I guess. However, it is nowhere near the Usenet, where my provider GigaNews I can get 20 simultaneous streams at full speed. Torrents for me, tops out at around 20kps to 120kps. Not the speediest in the world. The app works well for me, if I want to wait. Unfortunately, we all sometimes have to wait for what we want.
Whoops, just looked at my post. I was trying to say 20 to 120 kps is kiloBytes per second. Just putting kps you might think kb/s instead of kB/s.
Should have said/asked – any good feeds/sites that you can recommend?
Hi Chris-
I came across your page, and hope you can help me. I’ve been using Xtorrent for a few years now, and the application has always worked wonders – lots of torrent options for each of my searches. However, lately when I do a search, only 2 to 3 torrent options pop up for anything that i look for.
Any advice on how to fix this?
Thanks.
Jesus
Yeah that had to be true about technology. There are too
many things that have been happening in the World Wide Web that I don’t think I
could get a hang of.