October 27, 2008

Torrent Downloading

Warning for new users:

While P2P file sharing technology is completely legal, many of the files traded through P2P are copyrighted. Unless you live in Canada where users are shielded from P2P lawsuits, then downloading P2P files may put you at risk for a civil lawsuit in any other country. These lawsuits are usually class-action suits, filed against groups of users who blatantly copy and distribute copyrighted materials. Recently, the MPAA, the RIAA, and the governments of England and Australia took several thousand users to court, demanding that they pay thousands of dollars in copyright infringement penalties.

Your Internet service provider may, at their discretion, release their logs of your downloading activity to potential copyright plaintiffs. The more megabytes you download, the more you risk being sued by copyright protection groups. Please know this risk before you use any of the following Torrent search engines below.

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Torrent Downloading is a peer-to-peer file sharing practice used to transfer large amounts of data. Each client is capable of preparing, requesting, and transmitting any type of computer file over a network, using the protocol. Each peer who downloads the data also uploads them to other peers. It provides redundancy against system problems and decreases dependence on the original distributor.

A peer is any computer running a request of a client.

The initial distributor of the complete file or collection acts as the first seed

Peers that provide a complete file are called seeders, and the peer providing the initial copy is called the initial seeder.

Torrent downloading is best suited to continuously connect broadband environments, since dial-up users find it less efficient due to frequent disconnects and slow download rates.

Torrent file sharers, compared to users of client/server technology, often have little incentive to become seeders after they finish downloading. The result of this is that torrent swarms gradually die out, meaning a lower possibility of obtaining older torrents. Some torrent websites have attempted to address this by recording each user's download and upload ratio for all or just the user to see, as well as the provision of access to newer torrent files to people with better ratios.

[Referred from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_(protocol)]


Popular Torrent Sites

Piratebay

This is the most popular torrent search site today which has an immense database of 600,000+ torrents, the largest database at this time.


Mininova


Torrentz


Torrentportal


Isohunt


Demonoid

You will need a username password to log in and download torrent files.


Youtorrent


BWTorrents



Torrent Downloading Softwares

uTorrent
(Known as both "u-torrent" and "micro torrent", this is the most popular torrent tool today. uTorrent has all the functions a torrent downloader will ever need, and it only requires 1 MB of hard drive space and memory. uTorrent has all the downloading and seeding performance of its competitors, but with minimal impact to the rest of your computer's speed.)


Vuze (formerly known as Azureus)
(A Java language client; was considered "king" of the torrent programs until uTorrent software came along and took that crown away. As with uTorrent and any other software you install, ensure that you virus scan.)


Limewire

The Original BitTorrent Client

Basic Software's for PC

Leaving the OS (operating system), driver and VGA software’s aside, there are few software’s that you’re PC should have.
Even thought you’ll know most of these software’s, it’s just to ensure that you all have got it all right!
Unless you hold a visa card, or do torrent downloading, I don’t think it’s possible to get the original version of the software’s. So either you’ll download and use the trial versions (find serials in torrent sites and activate them or re-install when trial period finishes or, download the whole cracked software via torrent clients.

1.Antivirus
There are several antivirus software’s which are commonly used by most of the PC users today. And most of them are quite inefficient which do not detect the upcoming viruses.

http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
The above link shows the top ten software’s for 2008.

I recommend you’ll to use either AVG or Kaspersky since I’ve tried all 3 of it and they’re quire efficient.
Here are the software’s and download links for the trial versions.
a.AVG antivirus and internet security
http://www.avg.com/download-trial
I reckon you try out internet security. The options are bit complicated but quite efficient.

b.Kaspersky Antivirus
http://www.kaspersky.com/trials
It’ll keep updating and using for a month

2.Browsers
The other essential software that a PC requires is proper browser, which makes net surfing easier and resourceful.
a.Mozilla Firefox
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
This is a popular net browser that has managed to garner a large crowd towards them in a short time. It’s becoming highly popular due to the wide-ranging amounts of add-ons, themes and plug-ins it contains, which makes browsing and managing web pages easy. Due to its widespread features, this tends to use more amount of the memory compared to Google chrome and safari.

b.Safari
http://www.apple.com/safari/
Apple’s browsing software with a simple, stylish interface which enables fast web browsing similar to that of Firefox.

c.Google Chrome
http://www.google.com/chrome
Being newly released browsing software by Google, which is more of a combination of both IE7 and Firefox. It’s simple interface and structure allows its users to browse smoothly through web pages. This does not have many features, therefore doesn’t tend to use much of the memory.

d.Internet Explorer 7
IE7 which is a Microsoft product that is commonly in use by most of the Microsoft brand loyal customers. There are several available download links found in the net, and even the Microsoft site. It’s not that I’m against IE7 but I strongly request not to download the software directly off the site, since it be likely to collapse your PC (or operating system), so that when you restart after installing it, you won’t be able to get passed the logon window.

3.Java
http://java.com/en/download/index.jsp
Java by Sun Microsystems is also another one of the essential software’s required by browsers and various applications. Even better its free .

4.Messengers
a.Windows Live Messenger
http://im.live.com/messenger/im/home/?source=MSNTDLINK

b.Yahoo Messenger
http://messenger.yahoo.com/download/

c.Google Talk
http://www.google.com/talk/

5.Audio/Media Players
a.Windows Media Player 10
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/10/default.aspx
Windows media player 11 is also available, but while installing it validates and checks whether the OS (XP/Vista) is genuine or not. Therefore tends to put your PC in a risk stage.
But if you’ll think it’s genuine why not try
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/11/default.aspx

b.Apple iTunes
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

c.Video Lan Player (VLC)
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html

d. Apple QuickTime Player
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

e.Real Player
Click here

6.Office Tools
a.Microsoft Office
I’m sorry to tell that there are no links other than torrents to get the full version of the MS office suite.

b.Open Office
http://download.openoffice.org/index.html
“It is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.” (http://why.openoffice.org/)

7.Browser Plug-ins
Here are few of the plug-ins required by all the web browsers in order to support web effects and documents.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:7

Adobe Shockwave flash
http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash