*speed up my PC* Feature Torrent

[mstirton]

Hey guys.

I've been in the computer realm a very long time now. And throughout the years, I have become quite familiar with many of the scams that are around.

One scam in particular that irks me the most is one under the variation of the name "speed up my computer" or "fix my pc".

I'm not one to tell any business how to do its job, but in this particular matter I want to shout out to you guys about one "featured content" I noticed just by chance now. It is under the variation name "speed up my PC" or "Speed up my computer" or "fix my PC" or somewhere along that line.

It looks legit on the surface, but that is all it is. Pure fluffware that can make things worse, FAR worse in fact, than what this crapware claimes. I have fixed too many computers now with that garbage installed. I am not sure if the software developers of this POS are legitimately trying to "F" things up with naive computer users or they are genuinely trying to help but seriously suck at executing this help in an actual way that helps the computer user. My experience thus far with such software like this has simply been to find the user's important files they want to keep, copy them to another drive, format and reinstall the OS without question.

It is ALWAYS the same thing...user experiencing a sluggish computer sees ad from said incompetent/scammy software developer (usually advertised on TV), downloads and installs and runs this crapware to "speed up their PC" and find it is worse than before, now they are slower in some cases and some legitimate things no longer function correctly or at all.

Just a fair caution to anyone else out there about this software. Use at your own risk of wasting your time completely in what ultimately may force you to reinstall the OS as a result of using this garbage. For the uTorrent developers, I highly recommend you distance yourselves from this crapware, including removal from the "featured content".

[Beasly]

I guess the almighty dollar trumps developement on utorrent since the takeover a few years back.

[vze2mp9g]

The uTorrent developers have to pay the bills somehow! But if you don't like it you can easily turn it off by going into Preferences -> Advanced, and look for left_rail_offer_enabled and set it to FALSE. This is from the uTorrent user manual/help file [F1].

left_rail_offer_enabled: This options enables new "Offers" (Ads) by Bittorrent Inc located at the left pane. Disable it if you like not to be alerted to new offers.

IMHO, most people who are using uTorrent, are not that dumb to take any type of offers they see in the Media or the internet. Common sense tells you if you install more software on your computer, it will become more slower. Plus, it is nice to reformat you boot drive and install your OS again because your computer will be as fast as the day you received/built it. I tend to do this myself about once a year. That's after installing and uninstalling software, adding new hardware, or removing old hardware you rarely use.

Personally, I save all my downloads to an external server, and once a month, I have a script that backs up my user folder, just in case of a total crash and the data is irrecoverable.

I've been with computers since the early to mid 1980's, so I have some experience.

[Beasly]

The uTorrent developers have to pay the bills somehow!

I would agree but Utorrent/Bitorrent .inc makes a few million per year so I think the bills and overhead are being paid.

It is ALWAYS the same thing...user experiencing a sluggish computer sees ad from said incompetent/scammy software developer (usually advertised on TV), downloads and installs and runs this crapware to "speed up their PC" and find it is worse than before, now they are slower in some cases and some legitimate things no longer function correctly or at all.

As far as scamware, it should never ever be incorporated into reputable software.

The experienced users are savy enough not to think twice to even consider to click through ads but the non-technical users may chomp at the bait!

There a total of 258,549 registered users on both utorrent/bitorrent forums and there are millions of utorrent/bitorrent users so the odds are that the majority of them don't even know how or even bother to turn of featured ads off on utorrent.

The temptation to click and install the ads/software are greater.

[vze2mp9g]

The uTorrent developers have to pay the bills somehow!

I would agree but Utorrent/Bitorrent .inc makes a few million per year so I think the bills and overhead are being paid.

That much!? Where does the $$ come from' date=' because not to many people go with the Plus version. I was under the assumption that Bit Torrent was open source, sort of like Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird. I have no idea how they get the $$ for what they do.

I wish I knew how they do it because I would like some of that action.

It is ALWAYS the same thing...user experiencing a sluggish computer sees ad from said incompetent/scammy software developer (usually advertised on TV)' date=' downloads and installs and runs this crapware to "speed up their PC" and find it is worse than before, now they are slower in some cases and some legitimate things no longer function correctly or at all.[/quote']

As far as scamware, it should never ever be incorporated into reputable software.

The experienced users are savy enough not to think twice to even consider to click through ads but the non-technical users may chomp at the bait!

There a total of 258,549 registered users on both utorrent/bitorrent forums and there are millions of utorrent/bitorrent users so the odds are that the majority of them don't even know how or even bother to turn of featured ads off on utorrent.

The temptation to click and install the ads/software are greater.

I have to agree with you on that because most people who own a PC/Mac/ or what ever, really don't read the help/manual until it's the last resort. Personally, I like to know as much something I spent money on and use on a daily basis, except cars! I just know where to put the oil, gas, windshield wiper fluid, radio, heater/air conditioner, and key to the ignition in.

[ciaobaby]

That much!? Where does the $$ come from,

http://www.bittorrent.com/company/about/partners

and http://www.bittorrent.com/dna

[Beasly]

With well over 125 million active users a month uTorrent is by far the most used BitTorrent client. Because of its success the software is also the main source of revenue for San Francisco based parent company BitTorrent Inc. It is estimated that the company currently generates between $15 and $20 million in annual revenue but this figure is expected to rise after it was quietly announced that uTorrent will become ad-supported.

For BitTorrent Inc. the main motivation to add sponsored torrents is to generate extra revenue. The company added dozens of employees to its payroll in recent years, and these all have to be compensated.

However, a person close to the company told TorrentFreak that even without the uTorrent ads the company is doing very well. Current annual revenue is estimated at somewhere between $15 and $20 million and the company is backed by millions in venture capital.

With “sponsored torrents” BitTorrent Inc could possibly bring in millions of added revenue and grow even further.

[xordae]

A generally computer-savvy userbase does not make grimy business moves excusable. The poor bastards who don't know any better, who have toolbars hijacking their browser and who download malware.. they're not 'unaccountable mishaps who better smarten up', they are a result of junk deals like these. The argument that the junk is easy to disable does not fly; the junk exists.

Admittedly, they're also giving away a great product for free. But there's no two ways about what peddling junk is. It's peddling junk. Other ways to make revenue exist, y'know. Show me a single person who is happy to use whatever it is they're bundling and I'll swallow my words.

[mstirton]

@xordae

Exactly it. There are to be certain, many savvy users out there, and many of them use utorrent. But I am sure many of those users tell other less savvy users about torrent and all its goodness and off these wayward adventurers go off by themselves and next thing ya know, they are asking us in the know to fix their screwups.

I fully support the concept of the advertising in the applet. That isn't an issue. The issue is that one of the ads belongs to a company I personally believe is not acting in the best interest of the end user base, instead relying on previously stated "less savvy users" to install, use and eventually pay up to "fix" ALL those errors the program found, meanwhile there likely wasn't anything really wrong except perhaps excessive fragmentation or hard drives that are almost full, aforementioned crapware (or malware-ish) assortment of toolbar and 2000 background tasks running in the task pool. Yes, like others have said, there are some pretty stupid users out there bordering on the edge of dangerous because someone unwisely gave them a computer. Reducing their exposure to such dubious software is in all our interests.

Yes, uTorrent needs to pay the bills...but I think the onus is upon us "more savvy users" out there to do what we must to help the community at large and nip a problem in the bud before those less savvy users come to us to "fix" their problem child computer. Questionable software from the likes of "Speed up my pc" et al is IMHO, certainly qualifies as such. I need not turn off the feature that displays the ad...I am aware of how to disable it...I am merely passing on to the developers about the scamware they are pushing to the clients and hoping they will make the right decision and send that company packing when the current ad space expires.