20051212

Bittorrent Clients

PS: If you do not know what Bittorrent is, go here.

There are lots of Macintosh Bittorrent Clients, and I've tested them all. Here is my lowdown - all are free, of course ;)

Azureus - Simply the best. A CPU hog (it is in Java), but it gets all the torrents the other clients can't. Seems to be the best for speed too, IMO. Highy configurable and a pleasure to use for power users.

Bits on Wheels - This one would be my best overall choice. Very low CPU usage, great user interface, good customization, interesting '3d view' of peers and seeders, and efficient most of the time, except for those torrents that only Azureus manages to start downloading somehow.

Transmission - Some people swear by this program because it is small and simple, but I find the CPU usage of it growing steadily, even more than Azureus when I am downloading 3 or more files, and the speed is inconsistent. Very few options, I don't really like it but lots of people do. Usually gets the job done anyway.

Bittorrent - The official client. Not bad CPU usage, not very good speeds, a so-so client. Not worth getting, if you hate Azureus, get Bits os Wheels instead, though maybe this is the most stable client of all them - not a big issue since we Mac users don't have to go resetting our computers all the time ;)

Tomato Torrent - Seems to have problems with a lot of torrents that should work, so I didn't test this one very much.

Bitpump - Small program, just released, shows big potential (from what I've seem from the Windows version screens, the Mac one is still kinda rough) but now it is still too bugged.

Please warn me if I forgot any client and happy downloading ;)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

acqlite works on Macs. Smaller footprint than Aquisition.