How To: Use Torrents

First of all, let's start off by me telling you what I am going to tell you about. Haha, you still with me? Ok good. Well this article will briefly tell you what a torrent is, why you would want to use them, where to find them, and how to use them. Just as a notice, this is legal so if you choose to do something illegal with it I take no part in that responsibility. Well if you are ready to dive into this, then let's go.

Torrents are nothing more than a file type such as: .doc, .mp3, or anything else. That is the the first thing to understand. The torrent isn't the files you download, rather it is what tells your computer and software how to find those files. When you download the torrent file and open it the software should start to immediately finding other sources to download the files from. That's what makes this all work, other users. When you go to download you will notice that the more "seeders" you have, the faster your download should be and the more "leechers" you have the slower it will probably be. Seeders are other people who have the files that you are trying to download and leechers are the people who are downloading the files. The most important aspect in determining your download speed is the seeder to leecher ratio. The greater the ration leans toward seeders the better, not just the total number of seeders matters when it comes to download speed.

You might be wondering, well that's all great and confusing but why would I want to use these? Legally, there isn't much use to be honest. You can still find things like old movies, songs, and books that are no longer copyrighted if you want to stick to that route. If you are more about freedom, then the sky is the limit when it comes to torrents. You can find just about any song, software, movie, book, game, or just about anything else that you can put on a computer, if you know where to look...

Sometimes you can find torrents at are on a company's website. Other than that you must use dedicated torrent sites. The google for finding torrents would have to be here. This site is a giant directory of other torrent sites, so if any of the popular sites have a torrent this search engine will let you know. Of course you can also use google to find torrents. Simply type in the name of the thing you are trying to download followed by "torrent" (without the " ") and you should be linked to at least one, if not several dozen other sites with the file. My favorite site to use is here, they have reviews for most of the files you will find on their site so you will know if its exactly what your looking for.

Now that you kinda of get whats going on, how do you do it? It's very simple, get some software! Here is a list of software you can get for your pc or your mac.

BitTorrent for pc and mac


Vuze for pc and mac, this one is is a hog on your computer, but its great for beginners and includes a built in torrent search to make your life that much easier. You can also add friends to share files at extremely fast rates, this is a feature that you can't find in other software.


Transmission is for mac only, this is my personal favorite and the one I use. It is easy on your computer, gets fast downloads, and has a very simple user interface.


uTorrent is for your pc only, this is a lightweight program that gets the job done with an easy interface.


So to go through everything one more time, simply find a torrent for a song, movie, or whatever you want and download it. Once it is done downloading open it with your software and wait for it to finish downloading. After your download has finished, be nice, and leave the torrent transferring so people can get pieces of the file from you, just as you got pieces from other people. That's it.

Here is a short video I made to help you out.


Things to keep in mind with torrents:
-- Bit Torrent is aimed at broadband users (or any connection better than dialup).
-- Sharing is highly appreciated, and sharing is what keeps bit torrent alive.
-- A bit torrent file (*.torrent) contains information about the piece structure of the download
-- The method of downloading is not your conventional type of download. Since downloads do not come in as one big chunk, you are able to download from many people at once, increasing your download speeds. There may be 100 "pieces" to a file, or 20,000+ pieces, all depending on what you're downloading. Pieces are usually small (under 200kb)
-- The speeds are based upon people sharing as they download, and seeders. Seeders are people who constantly share in order to keep torrents alive. Usually seeders are on fast connections (10mb or higher).

Enjoy!