Popular BitTorrent Clients in Review - uTorrent
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uTorrent is a freeware, Windows-only proprietary BitTorrent client. It is also called microTorrent thanks to the Greek μ letter prefix. It is considered the most lightweight, compact, and efficient peer-to-peer BT client. At the time of writing, the latest stable version is 1.7.5, and its size is 214kB. It was totally coded in C++ using custom-coded libraries and then compressed with UPX (.exe packer) to reduce its size.
It was already gaining recognition from the first days of its launch. Some of the most obvious reasons for that are its reduced size and the fact that it doesn't require installation. Because of this, it's extremely portable and resource efficient. Isn't it impressive that the client is able to run on a Win95 system with 486 processor and 14MB RAM?
It was designed to showcase most of the functionalities offered by other standalone clients, such as Azureus and BitComet, while using minimal resources. It's been months since uTorrent received top ratings in all kinds of reviews, considering its performance, stability, built-in set of features, and support for antique hardware.
It sports de facto standard functions, like multiple simultaneous downloads, configurable bandwidth scheduler, speed limiting (global or per-torrent), quick resumes, mainline DHT (compatible with BitTorrent DHT; trackerless support), HTTPS tracker support, customizable GUI (skins, etc.), embedded tracker, supporting proxies, protocol encryption (PE), configurable disk cache, and RSS support.
Summing up, uTorrent satisfies the "feature-rich and graphically empowered" guideline considering its level of performance, stability, effectiveness, and features. It's also impressive that all of the modern and powerful features are presented in a very understandable way so that they don't create confusion for those people that aren't familiar with the BitTorrent protocol systematization.
On December 7, 2006 uTorrent was acquired by BitTorrent, Inc. This means that they have implemented most of uTorrent's code in their own BitTorrent client, which was basically the first client developed by CEO Bram Cohen himself. As a result, the latest version of BitTorrent is in fact a re-branded version of uTorrent.
(The main interface of uTorrent-pay attention to the pieces and blocks.)
All in all, uTorrent deserves a 10/10 rating. In short we highly recommend trying out uTorrent as a BitTorrent client for people from all walks of life. It offers satisfying performance and feature-laden-ness for everybody from Joes and Jeffs, up to die hard Torrent fR3aK f4NaT1Ks (over-enthusiasts).
Final Thoughts
In this article we reviewed two of the most popular BitTorrent clients. We started this article with a brief overview of the BitTorrent protocol. By now you should be familiar with the necessary terminology and feel able to join in.
Furthermore, we're sure that you have already decided which of the presented BitTorrent clients you are going to choose. Needless to say, there are dozens of other alternatives. Should you prefer a larger variety of software, then check out BitComet, the original BitTorrent client, Shareaza, and perhaps Rufus. Also, we shouldn't forget about the built-in torrent client for Opera browser. You may want to see how it works.
Now that you're well prepared, you might want to immerse yourself in the BitTorrent community. It's a community built up by more than 150 million users. You are going to be blown away by the amazing speed of transfers, because depending on the situation, you may very easily reach your bandwidth peaks.
Oh, and by the way, don't forget to join us over Dev Hardware Forums. We're nothing but a friendly, knowledgeable, and technology-savvy community specializing in everything that's related to consumer electronics, computer hardware and software.
Thanks for reading and I'll see you in the forums!
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