Cause we have torrents yo!
Alright so I told someone I would put up a guide on how to get torrenting started on a windows machine. Linux is pretty much built with it already so for those of you who love sharing and open source you can go ahead and skip down to how to use torrent trackers. for the rest of you there are a couple things you gotta do first. Let's get this party started!
Step 1
Finding a good BitTorret client.
Pretty simple. I reccomend uTorrent cause of it's lightweight memory foorprint and built in anonymization.
What that means is it's quick and the feds have a harder time spying on you. How does one get uTorrent though?
It's simple. go to http://www.utorrent.com and click on the HUGE button in the middle of the page. Follow the instructions and install. This will be what handles your .torrent files and gets all the goodies on your computer. Easy as pie. A 5 year old could probably pull it off.
Step 2
Finding a good torrent tracker and learning how to search for the desired media without following the wrong links.
There are a few different sites depending on what type of media you are looking for. There are two I like to check out
for most of my torrenting needs. http://www.thepiratebay.org and http://www.btjunkie.org
The pirate bay has better readability and is less cluttered but there are big buttons on the download pages you want to avoid cause they actually lead to toolbars and things you don't need/want. Just go to the main site and type in what you want to look for. Check the appropriate boxes for the type of media you desire (music, movies, apps, ect) then get your pirate search going. Ill go into detail on how to select the proper torrent for fast and safe downloads a little later. Just braking down the basics right now.
btjunkie is nice cause it searches multiple trackers at once. Essentially it's a meta-search engine pulling from all over the internet. Quite handy when you aren't really sure which torrent community has the stuff you are looking for. It has a lot more ads and isn't quite as easy on the eyes but it has higher quality everything and more choices. Also it's a little less misleading when you come to actually getting your torrents.
If you are wanting movies I have heard great things about http://www.graboid.com
I havent used them personally but I have watched DVDs that have had media from this site. Good selection but you need to grab their software while youre there.
Step 3
Downloading your first torrent and setting sail into the digital waves
Knowing which torrent to get can be tricky. Knowing what a seed and a leech are goes a long way towards avoiding frustration when you want something fast. You probably already jumped the gun and are already on the pirate bay or btjunkie and youre wondering what the S/L with the numbers next to it means. Thats the number of seeds and leeches.
Seeds are computers that are currently sharing a whole torrent. Leeches are downloading from them and only have parts of the file available to share for the time being. More seeds = good, more leeches doesnt matter you only need to worry about the seeds. If the seed number is low it will take a LONG time to download. If that number is high the download will go FAST!
Ok so know that you know what you are looking for you need to know how to get it started. Click into whatever you searched for and make sure to read the comments at the bottom. Sometimes people like to upload crap on purpose because they think it's funny. Checking the comments is another good way to ensure you don't get infected. And always remember to surf with protection. I reccomend avast antivirus cause it's free. Use whatever you want.
Look for the words "download .torrent" not just the word "download" thats how you get toolbars that are hard to get rid of. .TORRENT remember it. that will be your favorite file type after you get comfortable with this :P Ok now you have a torrent, but what the hell?!?! where's my music? don't worry it's coming. that's the next part. the .torrent is just a pointer file to let you download from a bazillion computers with the same file. Let's move on to the next step to figure out how to make this work.
Step 4
Using the .torrent to get your files
Ok youve got the torrent file and youre super excited that youre about to get something totally awesome out of it but aren't sure how. Do you remember that program I mentioned at the beginning of the guide? uTorrent is going to handle all the downloading for you. All you have to do is open the .torrent file with uTorrent and then double check to make sure you have all the files in there and click ok. After waiting for a bit the download bar will fill up and you will get a notification that your downlad has completed. Most installs default to dropping your downloads in C:/Program Files/uTorrent/downloads or the my documents folder. You can always right click on the download bar and scroll down to "open containing folder" to find your files quickly.
step 5
cover my ass with a disclaimer
Thats really all there is to it. Just remember. America has copyright laws as do most other countries. Be aware that some things might technically be illegal to download and you should research your local laws before ripping someone off ;P
This guide is for informational/educational purposes only and is not ment to instruct anyone to break the laws of their country or state. the information in this guide must be used at your own discrestion and you are solely responsible for your actions. enjoy
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