Xtorrent Beta 3
February 10, 2007
I did the unthinkable today, I actually bought a torrent client which, given the sheer number of free clients, is quite something.
Xtorrent is the client in question and I bought it quite simply because it’s the first client that’s delivered in all the areas that I wanted and done it in a simple, reliable fashion.
I won’t lie, I download several torrents each week, mostly my favourite TV shows as there’s nothing worse than waiting 6 months to see a season of House or some other show that’s already finished in the states!
It’s proven hard in the past to keep up with shows, especially around Christmas and the New Year when some are cancelled. TapeItOffTheInternet (TIOTI) helped tremendously with that. Allowing me to add shows to keep track of and then subscribe to a feed to get links to the latest additions. It worked pretty well but it wasn’t quite perfect, I needed a torrent client that supported RSS.
Now, there are a number of these around, Azureus and BitRocket (to name a couple). However, Azureus is quite resource heavy (I don’t care what anyone says it’s true!) and I don’t think much to the interface either. BitRocket has a nice UI but was unstable at times, slow and currently has ceased development (albeit temporarily).
And so I turn to Xtorrent, or rather, the beta3 to be precise. Beta3 adds torrentcast support and combined with performance enhancements and bug fixes from previous builds, it’s now a very solid client. I get excellent speeds but most importantly, I now get to manage and download my shows directly from the client reliably and simply (see the shot on the right).
It’s refreshing to have a mac-based torrent client that does pretty much everything right. All I need now to make it perfect is a way to download individual files in a torrent and encryption support. (hint, hint)
Feedback?
If you’ve found errors or have some feedback please . Comments aren’t currently enabled due to spam but I’m sure they’ll return in the future.