uTorrent: The Efficient Way to Download Large Files

Dennis Faas's picture

Here are two questions Internet users commonly ask:

  1. " What is the best way to download very large files? ", and
     
  2. " What is the best way to distribute very large files? "

The answer to both is a file transfer protocol called BitTorrent. A typical download is from a single website to your computer. BitTorrent allows you to connect to all the people currently downloading a large file, and get pieces of it from them.

In other words, you are downloading from many places at once. This distributes the load so that no single computer is overloaded and it makes for very fast downloads. Most BitTorrent clients are completely free to download and use.

I decided to download the Pricelessware 2006 CD. The CD is a 637mb ISO file containing some of the best freeware on this planet. I found that my current BitTorrent client wouldn't work with this particular torrent seed, so I went out and got the one that they recommended.

The µTorrent client is only a 115k download and it didn't require an installer. All I had to do was download, unzip, and run it. Once I started the download, I was very impressed by the download speed and by how little of my system resources it used. It has all the features I need, supports all versions of Windows, and best of all: it's completely free!

http://utorrent.com/

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