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BitTorrent clients review

Grauw

By Grauw
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chaosblade Advanced Member

chaosblade

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I'd consider G3 a bad client, which still does (as far as i know, could be mistaken) allows practictlly almost not uploading at all. Yea, the BT protocol doesnt send out as much to people who dont upload back, but I still dont like the option you could set max upload to 1kB/s and also FAKE your client id in order to circumvent bans placed on G3's earlier versions.

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BloodStaindHurricane Advanced Member

BloodStaindHurricane

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Nice reviews, Grauw. I would recommend you change your "downside" review of utorrent a little. One downside you mentioned was the toolbar buttons, but you should mention that there are several custom made toolbars available in the utorrent forums...so this isnt really a downside.

utorrent is definitely the best client of all that I have used.

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Sid32 Advanced Member

Sid32

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As G3 has stopped being developed recently and the sourcecode has been taken improved and turned into Rufus. All of the problems you have mentioned have been fixed, fake stats, fake id, etc.

Have a build in webinterface is fantastic feature when you have time to kill at work or just want to moniter your downloads, not to mention being able to see your speed by just looking at the task bar icon is also a nice feature.

I did utorrent, but I really need a webinterface before I switch over 100%.

Cheers,

Sid

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Grauw Advanced Member

Grauw

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Nice reviews, Grauw. I would recommend you change your "downside" review of utorrent a little. One downside you mentioned was the toolbar buttons, but you should mention that there are several custom made toolbars available in the utorrent forums...so this isnt really a downside.

utorrent is definitely the best client of all that I have used.

Well, yes, you've got a point there. But it is what it looks like by default. It's not really a major downside anyway, I'm sure people can see that when I start complaining about icons, there isn't really much else to complain about :).

What I consider a bigger downside, and I only discovered after the review, is that µTorrent allocates the entire file at once.

Yet, I'm still using it. That disadvantage is outweighed by its many good points, and I hope support for incremental downloading will be added sometime soon.

Sid32: ah, interesting, thanks for the info.

~Grauw

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Karasuhebi Advanced Member

Karasuhebi

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Grauw - I added your review to Digg.com, I hope you don't mind. Hopefully this will enlighten people on some of the less-known BT clients like µTorrent and help them make a better decision of what client is best for them. Here's the link, just in case you are wondering what I wrote or in case you wanna digg it:

http://digg.com/links/BitTorrent_clients_review

-Karasuhebi

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sixshot Advanced Member

sixshot

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Proofreading... paragraph 3:

Features no. 2 and 3 are can't be found in every client, but they are important.

Delete the first 'are'?

It's a good review although I feel that it isn't 'complete'. But maybe that's just my imagination... Some additional info should you wish to include in your review:

BitTorrent clients written in languages other than Python are rare. With G3, Tornado, mainline, ABC, and others out there, it's easy to add in features and additional "support" from the original because it's written in Python. Shad0w's Experiemntal, now BitTornado, provides users a user-interface to many of the options that is tucked away in a command-line argument. And ABC extends upon Shad0w's own client and adds a queue and seed limit system. The more "well-known" clients out there are likely written in Python and are based off the mainline client in some form or another.

Azureus gets its popularity due to the incredible amount of features it has. The client has a queue system, seeding priority, bandwidth controls, torrent creation function, personalized tracker, auto-update, and lots others. People can be blinded from the truth about Azureus in that most people won't need to use the features that it has. Yet development continues on without any sign of stopping or slowing. The client is written in Java and as a result has some form of cross-platform ability. Funny... Python originated in the 'nix/BSD world with cross-platform in mind. There's even Python for OS X. Due to the client written in Java, you need the Java Runtime Environment in order to run it. Depending on your setup, that's an additional download. And since it runs in Java, the Java Virtual Machine is run in order to process the client's Java byte-code. That consumes memory. And because it is a Virtual Machine, that's a heavy process and consumes CPU cycles.

Many do not realize that some of the simple features, while a few possibly found only in Azureus, exists in other clients. As such, people blindly follow the word of the herd and use it, never realizing that they're making their computer choke and suffer. The client is good, feature-wise. But its popularity and its numerous features became the client's drawbacks and downfall.

BitComet is a rare client in that it is not written in Python... people like it because it is less stressful on the system. Yet strangely the client is banned at several trackers. And if you been through enough torrent sites, you probably have heard about it too. BitComet is seemingly a client that isn't liked. I do not know why and I am paranoid of it. But most people would have moved on and use a different client altogether. Is BitComet a client that is hated or is it a case of minor bugs that has been since fixed?

I feel that the review can be written a bit differently. Rather than recommending a client, it's better to guide people to choosing the client that best suits their needs. I'm sure we all have opinions about one client and the like. I think it's better to let the readers decide on their own on what client to use or install.

There's also the notion of creating a chart that helps simplify the readers' view on what the clients are capable of. I'm sure some would like to see how one client compare to another.

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BlackLion Advanced Member

BlackLion

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the Comet WILL get you your file. but it aint the most generous client. The whole point of torrenting was to share the bw.

AZ=needs to see Jenny Craig.

G3=Slow, buggy

ABC=so-so but butt-ugly.

the Comet=great balance of resource usage and features but a bit stingy

uT=small and light, great sharing factor, easy on the resources and just a few pieces away from being the one to beat. my client of choice ATM.

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Grauw Advanced Member

Grauw

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Thank you all for your comments. I have updated the article.

As G3 has stopped being developed recently and the sourcecode has been taken improved and turned into Rufus. All of the problems you have mentioned have been fixed, fake stats, fake id, etc.

Thanks for the information! After closer inspection of G3 Torrent, I ideed found some additional problems with it, most prominent being it forgetting the torrents it was downloading after shutting it down and restarting too soon! Rufus, however, seems to fix that. It's also good that apparantly the issues mentioned by the poster you responded to have also been fixed. I have now replaced G3 Torrent with Rufus. It is still my no. 2 choice.

Grauw - I added your review to Digg.com, I hope you don't mind. Hopefully this will enlighten people on some of the less-known BT clients like µTorrent and help them make a better decision of what client is best for them. Here's the link, just in case you are wondering what I wrote or in case you wanna digg it:

http://digg.com/links/BitTorrent_clients_review

Heh, thanks. There are quite some negative and insulting comments on digg.com (mostly by Azureus fanboys), but it is apparantly also appreciated by many. For sure, digg.com is now the no. 1 referrer to my website ;p.

Hmmmmm, sorry. I thought that was what that option was used for. Isn't it better to pre-allocate space anyway so that the file is all in one place, instead of being scattered all over your hard drive causing more fragmentation?

It depends on your situation. I copy my files to either another 'storage' drive or a DVD after downloading anyway, so the fragmentation thing isn't really an issue for me. As some torrents can take a week to complete, e.g. a DVD image which is badly seeded, that means the full 4 GB is allocated on my harddisk all the time.

It's a good review although I feel that it isn't 'complete'. But maybe that's just my imagination... Some additional info should you wish to include in your review:

Thanks a lot sixshot for your comment. You definitely hit the spot with your comments about Azureus, that is exactly what I mean. I have tried to update my review a little to better reflect my objections against the client.

The programming language details you mentioned are interesting (and I knew about that :)), and I certainly think it is good background information. However, I do not think it is very important information to 'the common people' who has no computer science background and is just interested in a good client to download his files with.

I feel that the review can be written a bit differently. Rather than recommending a client, it's better to guide people to choosing the client that best suits their needs. I'm sure we all have opinions about one client and the like. I think it's better to let the readers decide on their own on what client to use or install.

Well, I tried looking to change that, but there's nothing much to do about that. Some clients are just better than the other, and I can only look at that from my own perspective. I think the individual reviews are fairly 'standalone' in giving my opinion about a particular client, and it would be weird if in the end I didn't give my recommendation.

It's also important to have a conclusion. Many readers probably won't even read (much of) the reviews, and just skip ahead to the conclusion. At least I know that is what I often do when reading e.g. game reviews in a Playstation 2 magazine. I only read the reviews of games that particularly interest me, or get a high score.

There's also the notion of creating a chart that helps simplify the readers' view on what the clients are capable of. I'm sure some would like to see how one client compare to another.

Yes, that would be nice, but way too much work :). I've linked to the Wikipedia one now, but I think even that one isn't complete, e.g. it doesn't contain information about speed, UI, and more advanced options like pre-allocating disk space or not.

BitComet wasis banned from trackers, mostly private ones, because it has been known to mis-report how much you downloadeduploaded to the tracker, thus not giving out your real ratio and thats a problem for private trackers.

I'd say that is probably fixed by now. It's difficult to clear a bad name when you got it, and doing so must have been the no. 1 priority for the developers. Anyways, I've also seen trackers that recommend it, so it probably isn't that bad.

Also, the download/upload figures that clients reports are solely for statistical purposes, it does not influence the functioning of the protocol.

It also tends to leech on the torrents themselves, almost always the peers with the lowest/no amount uploaded were BitComet peers. :/

Well, if it misreported the download/upload, it's obviously not possible to trust such observations...

Anyways, I'll categorise this under 'rumours' for now :). Fairness of distribution is inherent to the BitTorrent protocol (otherwise it would simply not work), so I'm quite sceptical with regard to whether it can really be that bad.

For stuff like this, Wikipedia is perfect ^^

Thanks, I've added the link.

~Grauw

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Karasuhebi Advanced Member

Karasuhebi

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Yeah man, I saw all the bad comments you got on my Digg.com story. Damn, I feel so bad. = I just wanted to link people to a good review, but all the Azureus fanboys seem to hate the fact of seeing their client being owned by µTorrent. Heh, at least the comments helped/motivated you to better your review, am I right?

BTW, your review is not complete. Look:

"However, these are my personal opinions, and if you wish to check out another client (e.g. Azureus, which is, after all, quite popular), you are free to do so. But I think

-Grauw"

One last thing: I posted a comment in my Digg story for your review telling people you updated the review and changed some stuff. I recommend you go and read all the comments you are getting/going to get about this update to your review, it might be helpful.

-Karasuhebi

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