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Hello there. I'm going to be posting some of the newest and best programs out there for various things, from music listening to image processing and so on...
So let me start with the download/internet section first, we all live in a world of fast internet connection and these few programs are going to make your life a little bit easier and richer.
This blog is going to be about internet programs like P2P, bittorrent and download managers.
Bitcomet is a bittorrent and FTP/HTTP downloading client. You've probably heard about it and its a great all round program for downloading torrents with quite a bit additional features. Why I am recommending it is even though it has some tough competition is because right now its the fastest bittorrent client out there.
Utorrent is very small and wastes less resources, but lately its speed has been dramatically reduced, while bitcomet downloads with your max internet speed from start till end. You can also register with the bitcomet network and get even more speed in case some downloads are slower than expected.
Shareaza 2.5.4.0 is a P2P file sharing program. With Limewire officially gone, there are other P2P programs now fighting for supremacy and Shareaza 2.5.4.0 is the best out the bunch.
I am writing the program version because shareaza 2.5.4.0 is hosted of sourceforge.org and is not related in any case to the malware shareaza.com website which has its "shareaza" client at version 7.
The original shareaza can be downloaded from sourceforge or other trustworthy download websites like download.com and filehippo.com. But enough about that, Shareaza supports all available sharing networks from the original emule network to gnutella 1, its own gnutella 2 network to DC++ network and bittorrent protocol. Its basically all in one program and a pretty good one at it. It has a superb build-in filter that removes most of the malware and spam files.
Sopcast is a streaming client(not a service). Do you want to watch football, tennis, news, etc... online it can do it. The program has built in channels featuring sport streams, comedy streams, news streams and so on... You can also find all over the internet links for sopcast streams and you can watch pretty much everything on it. Its also the best as utilizing your internet connection and there is almost no lag spikes or stream shutdown. Basically 98% of the time it features great stream, while the stream quality depends on the streamer of course.
Orbit Downloader is a HTTP download manager or in lames terms, a program for downloading files from the internet. With orbit downloader you can download pretty much everything, from images, videos, embedded videos, youtube videos, yahoo video and even protected images.
The latest version also adds software updater that is going to inform you if there are new versions of the software you have installed, though there are still some quirks there and you shouldn't always download what it suggests.
Anyways other than than it has the ability to pause and resume downloads, it can fetch files from different servers/users and has ability to schedule downloads.
Last but not least is the browsers wars. This is not such a one sided match and each browser has its positives and quirks. Chrome 10 is the lightest and just a little bit faster than firefox 4, while firefox 4 is the newest from mozilla featuring improved interface, great sync options and "Tab groups" as well as tons of add-ons and extensions. IE9 just released as well and its got one of the most reliable graphic accelerated engines, slightly faster than both chrome and firefox. Then there is also Opera which is sort of in the middle between the rest. Its generally fast and stable enough, but does not really do anything better than the rest of the browsers.
So it comes down to choice and the best way is to use them all for a while and then decide.
Firefox 4
Chrome
Internet Explorer 9(Vista, win7 only)
Opera 11
 
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I've used BitComet for years, despite it being less heralded than other torrent clients. Sopcast is decent, but it really depends on what you're wanting to watch. Some things are just not streamed.
As for browser, I use Flock.
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This list screams 2005...
I Find uTorrent to be a much better alternative.
Also Frostwire is the open source copy cat of Limewire and as far as I know, it is still working.
Most browser comes with an inbuilt download manager, making Orbit Downloader really useless.
Otherwise, look up Ninite, it is by far one of the best tool out there.
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On April 03 2011 02:43 Peekay.switch wrote:
This list screams 2005...
I Find uTorrent to be a much better alternative.
Also Frostwire is the open source copy cat of Limewire and as far as I know, it is still working.
Most browser comes with an inbuilt download manager, making Orbit Downloader really useless.
Otherwise, look up Ninite, it is by far one of the best tool out there.
I'd like to see what browser you are talking about?
Can any of them download youtube, vimeo or other embedded videos? Ups, no they can't. Ups firefox and IE8/9 internal downloaders download with 60% of your internet speed, ups utorrent is very slow the past several months and bitcomet is right now as of these past few months the fastest bittorrent client so its not 2005, its 2011.
Frostwire is very slow, it only supports gnutella 1 network and its torrent downloading is just leeching which is why its banned from a lot of private servers.
Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about!
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I can only speak from my experience and I cannot support the claim that utorrent is slow at all. I download at max speed easily with it, so I don't know why you say that it is slower than BitComet. Either way, there are a couple of good torrent clients around and personal preference plays a big role in choosing a client for yourself.
I have used Emule for files that are rather rare but I think I'll give Shareaza a try. Description sounds fine so far.
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I vote uTorrent over Bitcomet too.
And I think I vote Hidownload over Orbit, for no other reason than that it supports blip.tv and livestream and all that kind of stuff which Orbit sometimes craps out on. I also find all the browser-embedding that Orbit does kind of annoyingly intrusive.
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Its got a lot to do with preferences, but speaking from extensive testing from optimized network to unoptimized network and from fast internet to slow, bitcomet is generally faster than utorrent.
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On April 03 2011 03:25 thehitman wrote:
Its got a lot to do with preferences, but speaking from extensive testing from optimized network to unoptimized network and from fast internet to slow, bitcomet is generally faster than utorrent.
You got a link to some evidence? Cause I'd love to get some more speed out of my torrents if I could.
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Not related to the best p2p program debate, BUT I just wanted to share an awesome software I just discovered: WinSplit Revolution. Basically if you have a high-resolution monitor it has hotkeys to quickly place/size windows perfectly into corners, sixths, halves, whatever. It's really easy to use and super handy. If you have ever tried to manually split windows into halves or whatever you know how much of a pain it can be, and this makes doing it and more EASY. This 45-second demo shows it in use.
Though not a replacement for a multi-monitor management program (use UltraMon for that), it does work with multi-monitors too. One of those programs I never thought I needed and now couldn't imagine not having.
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µTorrent was the top pick here last time, but really has not shown much new since, other than the addition of a toolbar, home page and search engine change enabled at default on install. Their uTP protocol looked to be a big step forward for bittorrent, but really has not amounted to much in this time. Their recent addition of Apps looks to be about as enticing as the failed Vuze model. Their big step backwards was the malware ridden toolbar chosen as part of their install. It also looks like a subsequent toolbar was foisted on some users without their consent or when they updated through the client. They have since chosen the Bing toolbar. Still this is a stable and low resource using client that performs excellently on torrents. µTorrent's FAQs, guides and forums make for excellent support. Those elements have combined to make µTorrent by far and away the most popular bittorrent client. Once you get past the install addon and change issues, µTorrent is certainly an excellent choice.
Note: Received a comment from " boristhemoggy" regarding the BitTorrent client. The BitTorrent client is identical to uTorrent and the BitTorrent forums refer users to the µTorrent fora. I do not know if BitTorrent is adding anything additional to their download as the BitTorrent installer is 4.5MB and the µTorrent is 390KB. Anyhow, the BitTorrent client is functionally the same as µTorrent. Bottom line for BitTorrent is "just get µTorrent".
Pros: Efficient and stable client with a large amount of features packed into a tiny package. Excellent help resources. Leader in the bittorrent field at the moment.
Cons: Has continued to have critical security alerts at Secunia. Bing Toolbar install and search/home page change enabled at default on install.
Source
Bitcomet doesn't get top comments also, but from my own experience with all of the programs I say its currently the best.
As far as the test goes it was done by me on my cable internet with 8mb/512kbps dl/up and then on a wireless network with 256kbps/32kbps dl/up.
first the tests were with unoptimized win7 connection and then with optimized win7 connection.
On the wireless laptop it was tested on XP SP3 with default settings and optimized settings.
The program used for speed optimization is TCPOptimizer, using a mix of optimal and custom settings.
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uTorrent + private trackers = all I will ever need 
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On April 03 2011 02:49 thehitman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2011 02:43 Peekay.switch wrote:
This list screams 2005...
I Find uTorrent to be a much better alternative.
Also Frostwire is the open source copy cat of Limewire and as far as I know, it is still working.
Most browser comes with an inbuilt download manager, making Orbit Downloader really useless.
Otherwise, look up Ninite, it is by far one of the best tool out there. I'd like to see what browser you are talking about? ...
Chrome can grab pretty much any video/image from a website via 'Inspect Element -> Network' and finding the media there.
I always found download managers useless, as I never needed to pause a download, maybe that's just me.
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On April 03 2011 06:02 thehitman wrote:Show nested quote +µTorrent was the top pick here last time, but really has not shown much new since, other than the addition of a toolbar, home page and search engine change enabled at default on install. Their uTP protocol looked to be a big step forward for bittorrent, but really has not amounted to much in this time. Their recent addition of Apps looks to be about as enticing as the failed Vuze model. Their big step backwards was the malware ridden toolbar chosen as part of their install. It also looks like a subsequent toolbar was foisted on some users without their consent or when they updated through the client. They have since chosen the Bing toolbar. Still this is a stable and low resource using client that performs excellently on torrents. µTorrent's FAQs, guides and forums make for excellent support. Those elements have combined to make µTorrent by far and away the most popular bittorrent client. Once you get past the install addon and change issues, µTorrent is certainly an excellent choice.
Note: Received a comment from " boristhemoggy" regarding the BitTorrent client. The BitTorrent client is identical to uTorrent and the BitTorrent forums refer users to the µTorrent fora. I do not know if BitTorrent is adding anything additional to their download as the BitTorrent installer is 4.5MB and the µTorrent is 390KB. Anyhow, the BitTorrent client is functionally the same as µTorrent. Bottom line for BitTorrent is "just get µTorrent".
Pros: Efficient and stable client with a large amount of features packed into a tiny package. Excellent help resources. Leader in the bittorrent field at the moment.
Cons: Has continued to have critical security alerts at Secunia. Bing Toolbar install and search/home page change enabled at default on install. SourceBitcomet doesn't get top comments also, but from my own experience with all of the programs I say its currently the best. As far as the test goes it was done by me on my cable internet with 8mb/512kbps dl/up and then on a wireless network with 256kbps/32kbps dl/up. first the tests were with unoptimized win7 connection and then with optimized win7 connection. On the wireless laptop it was tested on XP SP3 with default settings and optimized settings. The program used for speed optimization is TCPOptimizer, using a mix of optimal and custom settings.
So the tests were just done by you? Over how long a period of time did you test? Did you use different connections? Aren't torrents unpredictable anyway? How much faster did you find BitComet?
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On April 03 2011 02:49 thehitman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2011 02:43 Peekay.switch wrote:
This list screams 2005...
I Find uTorrent to be a much better alternative.
Also Frostwire is the open source copy cat of Limewire and as far as I know, it is still working.
Most browser comes with an inbuilt download manager, making Orbit Downloader really useless.
Otherwise, look up Ninite, it is by far one of the best tool out there. I'd like to see what browser you are talking about? Can any of them download youtube, vimeo or other embedded videos? Ups, no they can't. Ups firefox and IE8/9 internal downloaders download with 60% of your internet speed, ups utorrent is very slow the past several months and bitcomet is right now as of these past few months the fastest bittorrent client so its not 2005, its 2011. Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about!
FF has this thing called add-ons you know, something that makes it the best browser of them all. And there is a large variety of those that allow you to download the videos, pictures and whatever else you desire (with 100% of your internet speed, at least that's how it works for me on my 10Mbit connection).
Not sure about BitComet as I'm using Transmission myself (switched from Deluge recently) so I won't comment on it.
BitComet is using over 4 times the resources uTorrent is using, and for many people (like myself and most laptop users) keeping it lightweight is the key.
Anyway, as far as torrents go, if you get a bad torrent your client won't help you there. If you get a good torrent you're going to download really fast. Simple as that.
P. S.
As a rule I'm trying to avoid installing unnecessary or bloated software on my computer. Programs that can do a lot of things usually do them worse than specialized ones.
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On April 03 2011 06:45 Wohmfg wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2011 06:02 thehitman wrote:µTorrent was the top pick here last time, but really has not shown much new since, other than the addition of a toolbar, home page and search engine change enabled at default on install. Their uTP protocol looked to be a big step forward for bittorrent, but really has not amounted to much in this time. Their recent addition of Apps looks to be about as enticing as the failed Vuze model. Their big step backwards was the malware ridden toolbar chosen as part of their install. It also looks like a subsequent toolbar was foisted on some users without their consent or when they updated through the client. They have since chosen the Bing toolbar. Still this is a stable and low resource using client that performs excellently on torrents. µTorrent's FAQs, guides and forums make for excellent support. Those elements have combined to make µTorrent by far and away the most popular bittorrent client. Once you get past the install addon and change issues, µTorrent is certainly an excellent choice.
Note: Received a comment from " boristhemoggy" regarding the BitTorrent client. The BitTorrent client is identical to uTorrent and the BitTorrent forums refer users to the µTorrent fora. I do not know if BitTorrent is adding anything additional to their download as the BitTorrent installer is 4.5MB and the µTorrent is 390KB. Anyhow, the BitTorrent client is functionally the same as µTorrent. Bottom line for BitTorrent is "just get µTorrent".
Pros: Efficient and stable client with a large amount of features packed into a tiny package. Excellent help resources. Leader in the bittorrent field at the moment.
Cons: Has continued to have critical security alerts at Secunia. Bing Toolbar install and search/home page change enabled at default on install. SourceBitcomet doesn't get top comments also, but from my own experience with all of the programs I say its currently the best. As far as the test goes it was done by me on my cable internet with 8mb/512kbps dl/up and then on a wireless network with 256kbps/32kbps dl/up. first the tests were with unoptimized win7 connection and then with optimized win7 connection. On the wireless laptop it was tested on XP SP3 with default settings and optimized settings. The program used for speed optimization is TCPOptimizer, using a mix of optimal and custom settings. So the tests were just done by you? Over how long a period of time did you test? Did you use different connections? Aren't torrents unpredictable anyway? How much faster did you find BitComet?
Its done on a private tracker with 20 seeds constantly and varying peers, usually from 10 to 150.
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On April 03 2011 07:11 thehitman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2011 06:45 Wohmfg wrote:On April 03 2011 06:02 thehitman wrote:µTorrent was the top pick here last time, but really has not shown much new since, other than the addition of a toolbar, home page and search engine change enabled at default on install. Their uTP protocol looked to be a big step forward for bittorrent, but really has not amounted to much in this time. Their recent addition of Apps looks to be about as enticing as the failed Vuze model. Their big step backwards was the malware ridden toolbar chosen as part of their install. It also looks like a subsequent toolbar was foisted on some users without their consent or when they updated through the client. They have since chosen the Bing toolbar. Still this is a stable and low resource using client that performs excellently on torrents. µTorrent's FAQs, guides and forums make for excellent support. Those elements have combined to make µTorrent by far and away the most popular bittorrent client. Once you get past the install addon and change issues, µTorrent is certainly an excellent choice.
Note: Received a comment from " boristhemoggy" regarding the BitTorrent client. The BitTorrent client is identical to uTorrent and the BitTorrent forums refer users to the µTorrent fora. I do not know if BitTorrent is adding anything additional to their download as the BitTorrent installer is 4.5MB and the µTorrent is 390KB. Anyhow, the BitTorrent client is functionally the same as µTorrent. Bottom line for BitTorrent is "just get µTorrent".
Pros: Efficient and stable client with a large amount of features packed into a tiny package. Excellent help resources. Leader in the bittorrent field at the moment.
Cons: Has continued to have critical security alerts at Secunia. Bing Toolbar install and search/home page change enabled at default on install. SourceBitcomet doesn't get top comments also, but from my own experience with all of the programs I say its currently the best. As far as the test goes it was done by me on my cable internet with 8mb/512kbps dl/up and then on a wireless network with 256kbps/32kbps dl/up. first the tests were with unoptimized win7 connection and then with optimized win7 connection. On the wireless laptop it was tested on XP SP3 with default settings and optimized settings. The program used for speed optimization is TCPOptimizer, using a mix of optimal and custom settings. So the tests were just done by you? Over how long a period of time did you test? Did you use different connections? Aren't torrents unpredictable anyway? How much faster did you find BitComet? Its done on a private tracker with 20 seeds constantly and varying peers, usually from 10 to 150.
Over how long? How much faster was BitComet? I'd definitely switch if I got faster speeds cause I don't even run torrents when I'm using my laptop anyway.
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The file I tested was 700mb iso file.
Using bitcomet it used 99% of my internet connection on XP and 97% on win7.
Using utorrent is used 90% of my internet connection under XP and 99% under win7.
Using XP unoptimized bitcomet downloaded the file in 45 minutes, while utorrent in 59 minutes.
using XP optimized bitcomet downloaded the file in 38 minutes, while utorrent in 45 minutes.
Utorrent needed about 6 minutes to reach 90% of the max speeds, while bitcomet reached max speed in 3 minutes.
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Cool, thanks for the data. How many times did you download it?
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On April 03 2011 07:37 thehitman wrote:
The file I tested was 700mb iso file.
Using bitcomet it used 99% of my internet connection on XP and 97% on win7.
Using utorrent is used 90% of my internet connection under XP and 99% under win7.
Using XP unoptimized bitcomet downloaded the file in 45 minutes, while utorrent in 59 minutes.
using XP optimized bitcomet downloaded the file in 38 minutes, while utorrent in 45 minutes.
Utorrent needed about 6 minutes to reach 90% of the max speeds, while bitcomet reached max speed in 3 minutes.
Meh, I think these are issues on your side. Whenever I download a torrent in uTorrent I reach max speed in 1 min tops. Using less system resources is also a good thing.
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On April 03 2011 07:37 thehitman wrote:
The file I tested was 700mb iso file.
Using bitcomet it used 99% of my internet connection on XP and 97% on win7.
Using utorrent is used 90% of my internet connection under XP and 99% under win7.
Using XP unoptimized bitcomet downloaded the file in 45 minutes, while utorrent in 59 minutes.
using XP optimized bitcomet downloaded the file in 38 minutes, while utorrent in 45 minutes.
Utorrent needed about 6 minutes to reach 90% of the max speeds, while bitcomet reached max speed in 3 minutes.
So, uTorrent > BitComet on Win7, BitComet > uTorrent on XP.
Your claim that the client is better comes from the fact that it performs better on an outdated OS? Please...
Also, your optimization seems to benefit uTorrent more:
BC: 45 -> 38 = 7 = 15.6%
uT: 59 -> 45 = 14 = 23.7%
And looking at your research, it might make a difference for low speed internet but otherwise it's negligible (I can download 6GB torrent in 2 hours on average, 700mb like you tested would take me anywhere between 3 and 5 minutes so it's not really a timespan that would worry me).
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EPT
