What are Torrents and how do I download with them? – Step by Step Guide

If you want to download music, videos, applications or other kinds of media, torrents will probably prove very useful to you.

The difference between torrents and other file sharing applications is that torrents aren’t centralised – ie. there isn’t one vendor that controls them. This has spurred the development of different torrent search engines.

The aim of this guide is to assist you in installing a torrent handler and to help you find the torrents you’re looking for.

A torrent is nothing without a handler to use it. When you download a torrent, you load the torrent file into the handler, the torrent file contains information that tells the handler where to download the actual files you were looking for.

 

What software to use:

I’d recommend using BitLord, it’s a safe application that doesn’t come crawling with spyware.

There are many other torrent handlers available, just search Google for torrent application and you’ll find plenty.

To install BitLord, go to www.bitlord.com. Click the Download tab at the top, click BitLord version 2. When it has downloaded, run the application to install it.

When you’ve finished installing BitLord, you’re ready to go torrent hunting.

 

What search engine to use:

A very useful website for torrent hunting is www.torrentscan.com. Torrent Scan itself isn’t a search engine, instead it hooks into many different torrent search engine making it easy to search through all of them.

On the left frame, you’ll see the site search box as pictured to the right. Type what you want here (eg. ftp client) and then click the search engine you’d like to use. If what you’re looking for doesn’t appear, try another search engine.

Note: Some of the search engines contain ‘inappropriate’ material. If you’re deeply offended by breasts, then you’re going to have a difficult time using torrents!

When you find the file you’re looking for, click it to download the torrent file. As a side note, you might want to see what other people have said, there is usually a comments section for the torrent file. If it’s a fake, someone will usually let you know there.

When the torrent is downloaded, click Open or Run and it will load into BitLord. BitLord will prompt you to select the files you’d like to download – all of them are selected as default. You can unselect anything you don’t want. When you’re ready, click the Download button and BitLord will start to download the torrent.

You’ll see a progress bar – wait until it gets to 100%. Once there, select the download and click ‘Open Folder’. In this folder, you should find the files that were downloaded.

The rest is history!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 31st, 2009 at 4:26 am and is filed under Computer Help. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.