I’ve been trying out a new BitTorrent client, µTorrent, and I really like it a lot.
The first thing I noticed about the app is that it’s tiny. The download is 114KB in size and that executable is the entire program. The memory requirements are similarly compact as it takes up less than 6MB of RAM on average. It’s a phenomenal programming achievement considering µTorrent doesn’t stint on features.
There’s no installation per se but keep in mind that some data files are dumped into the user Application Data directory. I would have preferred it if the data files were stored in the same directory as the application.
In terms of features, here are the main advantages µTorrent has over BitTornado (my previous favourite):
- Trackerless support. Can’t connect to a tracker? No problem. You’ll still be able to connect to peers and begin downloading.
- Automation. With µTorrent, you can automatically download a torrent until completed and then seed it at your maximum upload rate until you’ve reached a 1.000 share ratio and then switch to another torrent file.
- Unicode support. If you’ve ever used BitTornado to download a BitComet-created torrent with Chinese characters, you’ve probably encountered the errno2 error. You won’t face any such problem with µTorrent.
There are other Bittorrent clients with those same features but they tend to be bloated resource-hoggers or dodgy in some way.
µTorrent does have a couple of shortcomings but nothing major. I find it exasperating µTorrent doesn’t quite handle disk allocation elegantly. Apparently the option for compact allocation isn’t quite working at the moment. A bit ironic considering how compact the rest of the app is but I’m confident the developers will fix it. Some users might also rue the lack of support for UDP trackers (e.g. BitComet’s tracker) but the trackerless support feature ought to compensate for that in most cases.
All thing considered, µTorrent is a fantastic program and proof that good things do come in small packages.
Tips
If you need to add an external tracker or delete non-responsive trackers from a multi-tracker torrent, right-click on the torrent in µTorrent, select Properties then add or delete trackers as necessary.
µTorrent creates a copy of the torrent file in the user Application Data directory so you might want to right-click on the torrent and select the Remove And->Delete .torrent option once you’ve completed downloading and seeding a torrent.
To set your global upload and download rates, go to Options->Preferences->Network Options. If you’re a Streamyx 1Mbps user, I would recommend setting the upload rate to 25KB/s when downloading and 35KB/s when seeding. You can also set the IP to announce to a tracker if you’re behind a web proxy.
