I had another one of those proverbial coffee-spitting moments this morning when I got a link to PC Magazine’s list of the best torrent clients for 2011.
Setting aside the fact that 2011 is all of about 25 days old, which makes it tough to pick out the best of the year, the four listed — BitTorrent, Deluge, uTorrent and Vuze — are hardly representative of what’s available.
And the fact that Vuze somehow gets a little yellow and red “EC” as some sort of award as editor’s choice … well, that’s just horrific.
It’s like reviewing four of the best cars available for 2011, and picking a Hummer as the top model. It defies all logic.
But who knows? Me and my rack of outdated computers don’t really understand — and don’t really want to understand — what passes for popular technology in 2011. I’ve been down this road before.
If Joe Shmoe with zero computer knowledge wants to download a movie or something, then maybe point-and-click Vuze, with its plethora of unrelated options (free trial DVD burning! gasp! 😯 ) is the answer for him. I won’t argue the point.
Somehow its sad though, that PC Magazine could only come up with four torrent clients, and picked quite possibly the worst of the lot to highlight and endorse. Stop me before I cringe again.
P.S.: No, I don’t actually drink coffee. Blech.
Motho ke motho ka botho 
First of all coffee in moderation is fine. I drink fourteen fluid ounces of the stuff over an hour every morning. I also drink good coffee though. Brazil has good coffee.
On your post. I like transmission for bit torrents but I find my self using download them all for any kind of ISO download. Just because it works even if no one else is downloading it. On the other hand nothing for windows is well written so how can you get to angry. The quicker the buck the better so sloppy coding in windows is common. Or so I’m told.
Also its a PC magazine they are payed to create content that will get eaten up by your readers.
I am using rtorrent. It is not perfect.
pro: scans multiple directories for new .torrent files (auto starts download)
con: hashing gets cpu intensive.
Transmission, it is default in my distro of choice (Mint Gnome Edition) and has a simple WebUI that I like to use. Maybe not as elegant as d/ling .torrent files and automatically adding them, cut and pasting the Magnet link works just fine for me!
vuze? I thought utorrent was going to make it!
“Me and my rack of outdated computers don’t really understand”
Whoa, your laptops are sentient now? 😯
How can kmandla’s computers be sentient? Don’t you need a 6.66GHz eight core CPU, 64GB RAM and Compiz for that?
It’s PC Magazine. They only write stuff that appeals to PC (read “Windows”) users. Ubuntu, and other pointy-clicky stuff is as in-depth as they get in non-Windows stuff.
I’ve got a buddy who swears by Vuze, though, and I personally like uTorrent. It’s quick to start, and does the job.
They have only mentioned Win-based torrents. Nothing what is Linux-originated like KTorrent or Transmission.
lol Vuze indeed.. Even on Windows it’s a bloated hog!
Ever since the existence of uTorrent I have seen no point in running it at all. It’s slow, heavy and all that integrated stuff just annoys me. I don’t need to know what other people like, I am not like other people and don’t want to be!
On another note, I am ashamed to say I still run uTorrent under Wine. The only client to do what I want reasonably is qBittorrent (move files to dirs based on label) yet it had some stability issues. I’d love to use rTorrent, but for it to do what I want is just going to take too much effort.
I am a lazy bastard at heart! 😛
Quote:
“If Joe Shmoe with zero computer knowledge wants to download a movie or something, then maybe point-and-click Vuze, with its plethora of unrelated options (free trial DVD burning! gasp! 😯 )”
Another funny thing is with ‘Bitlord’, another windows torrent client.
There is an option called ‘XXX-chat’, I don’t wanna know if people are using this option what kind of stuff they’re downloading.
I’m using Transmission or rTorrent (several pc’s with different distro’s)
rtorrent works better than anthing on their list
increases my speed by 200 kbs
but transmission is good in gui
I always thought Deluge was very popular amongst Linux users?
In their defense different magazines/blogs/whatever cater to different audiences.
Time and Playboy would probably come up with completely different lists of ‘The century’s most influencial people’.
For PC Magazine’s core readership this is probably a useful roundup, for the enlightened readership of Motho Ke Motho Ka Botho its not so helpful.
Not wanting to come across as trolling or anything but perhaps a more positive approach would be to suggest your own ‘Best Torrent Client List’, then at least when the unenlightened google for ‘torrent clients’ they hopefully get a choice of suggestions.
PS what does Mr Mandla actually drink if he doesn’t drink coffee?
I can’t speak for K.Mandla. But as a non-coffee-drinker myself, I can tell you there is a big world of drinks outside caffeine and alcohol (which I drink neither).
My personal favorite is Milk, even though I always get funny looks when I drink it. I also enjoy a plethora of fruit juices: Mango, blackberry, orange, etc. With my taste buds used to these drinks, I find coffee extremely disgusting.
Blackberry juice? never come across it, sounds interesting though.
I don’t really have a sweet tooth so going without coffee and alcohol is a stuggle (opposite of you i guess), I do enjoy ginger beer though (is that just a british product?).
Anyway I asked the question because I can’t imagine what what he would drink at 2am fiddling with installing crux on another pc.
I have to say, there aren’t many good torrent clients on Windows. uTorrent is pretty much it. qBittorrent is on Windows, but I don’t know how well it works, or how bloated it is.
On Linux, I prefer qBittorrent, followed by Deluge. They are both highly configurable, with built-in block-list support, forced encryption, and WebUI.
from what i gather, most people on private trackers or with seeboxes use: utorrent, rtorrent, deluge, transmission and torrentflux (actually a frontend to bittornado)
average joe probably gets whatever’s at the top of his google results, and average mac probably pays for xtorrent
I pronounce it “micro-torrent”
btpd is of course the best torrent client (and daemon) for non windows environments.
i installed many clients. they all have their own specialities. recently, i like to use SoMud
http://www.somud.com
. quite professional design, easy search, fast downloads. it is actually more than a torrent client. the developers some other tools with it such as screen recorder, media player and media converter etc. quite handy client