Awesome Josh

The other day I introduced Lisa to torrents. She asked me for a tutorial, so here it is. It’s going to be quick, because most people won’t need to know everything there is to know about torrents. This is more of a basic usage guide.

Software

There’s a lot of software out there for torrents. Basically, you just need a client. I use uTorrent and I’ve also used Azureus. Both are great programs. So do a bit of research and find the one that’s best for you. Try a bunch of them out. I’m not going to run through how to set these up, they come with user guides or the information is freely available so why should I repeat myself? Here’s a great list for you to browse.

Finding Torrents

Do a google search for torrents and you’ll find a whole bunch of torrent search sites. When browsing through torrents to download, check out the comments. Most good torrent search sites will have a place where users can comment on the torrent, so read those. There’s no point in wasting your time on a torrent that’s shit.

What do these mean?

Seeders = How many people are uploading their complete copy of the torrent.

Leechers = How many people are downloading the torrent. Torrents are downloaded in pieces. Each person downloads certain pieces at a time, shares among the other leechers until they have a complete copy.

Torrent health = Usually this is just a ratio or percent and is found by how many are seeding vs. how many are leeching.

Torrent Etiquette

Alright, so you’ve got the torrent, now what do you do? Well, don’t be a bitch. Don’t just grab and run. Start seeding.

Now what the hell do I do?

Alright, so you’ve got your torrent, but it’s in .rar format?? What the hell is that? Well…think of .zip. It’s just a way to compress information into a handy little package just for you. How do you get it out? Good question. I use WinRAR and it gets the job done.

Where do I get my shit?

I can find pretty much anything I want to get my hands on by visiting only a couple torrent search sites. Most of them have the same stuff anyway, so why waste my time searching more than I have to. Usually when I want a torrent, I just search google for the torrent I want and out pops a bunch of shit.

Anyway. This was pretty simple. A lot of torrent guides are bloated, so this is just a quick one. Anyway…if you have any questions, you know where to find me.