For around 2-weeks I have been watching the µTorrent forum because they were recently acquired by BitTorrent. I have been a uTorrent user for quite some time but news of the acquisition left me a little disappointed. I began wondering whether the two programs were going to stay independent of each other or if they would slowly start to merge the two applications together in hopes that people wouldn’t have a problem accepting it.
Reading through the posts in the forum makes me believe that µTorrent will be losing some faithful users because of the acquisition though. This conclusion is from posts like these:
Back to BitComet for me!
Time to switch back to BitComet. This sucks.
This could be bad.
If it does get bad, it’s back to “no decent Bittorrent client in existence” for me.
Sucks for all the people who were helping this community. (webUI, forums, GUI themes, etc.)
One user even went on saying that there is a solution to the problem, and that is to disable the program from automatically updating which will keep µTorrent from getting a bloated update later on down the road. Other’s recommend that you should backup the program files for µTorrent and also the profile folder that is associated with it.
As for me I am just going to wait it out. I think BitTorrent would be stupid to step in and make µTorrent a bloated Torrent client because there are already plenty of those. The people who use it, such as myself, love it so much because it is really small and no installation is even needed to use it. As of right now I guess this is the only information that we have as far as what will happen:
Q: How will uTorrent’s technology be integrated with the current BitTorrent client?
A: Although uTorrent is lightweight, it is missing the patented innovations BitTorrent has made at the protocol level. It is also lacking an implementation for Mac and Linux. We will improve uTorrent in these arenas.
I just don’t like how it sounds when they say µTorrent is missing things that BitTorrent already takes advantage of. For me that is just a nice way of them saying they are going to make the application more bloated.
–The Poll–
So now I want to use this as a way to lead into our new poll. In the sidebar you’ll see 12 different BitTorrent clients that you can choose from. Pick the one that you use the most and over the next few days we’ll see which client tech enthusiasts think is the best!
I love uTorrent for the same reasons most others do: it’s small, reliable, and it gets the job done without all the bloatiness *ahem*Azureus*ahem*. Why do I need to see a memory-hogging display of where the packets are being sent and received?
Anywho, I will be sure to make a backup (and disable uTorrent’s Auto-Update feature). For me, uTorrent, in its original state, is a winner.
uTorrent is great at the moment. I hope it doesn’t turn into a massive piece of bloatware, or get RIAA “Improvements”
Oh no, oh no. This is bad news. One of the best bittorrent programs has been taken over by one of the worst bittorrent programs. I’m definitely going to disable to update feature. Or maybe I have to start looking for another client.
The best way to make sure that you can keep uTorrent is to download the installer from their site while you still can, keep it in a safe place and disable AutoUpdate.
Bad news.
The best politics for BitTorrent Inc. would be to ask Ludvig Strigeus (creator of uTorrent) to upgrade application to the last protocol version, and NOTHING ELSE.
Then make a Mac and Linux versions, as similar to Windows version, as it possible.
But don’t add all those extra features. uTorrent is unique, because it doesn’t include tons of “improvements” like almost all other faceless bittorrent clients.
Loading it with tons of extras = KILLing it.
Any download manager should be very small, because it is intended to run on desktop computers, on the background (service process – is the ideal solution). There is nothing to stare at, so no need to create extra GUI.
As always (and as I said in my trackback to the freeware list article) simple software gets bloated because idiots (maybe in suits) believe that they must advance the program, blah blah blah which they see as getting better ways to make money out of people. I used Azuereus until a few weeks ago and liked it, but uTorrent is just tiny and so I love it.
Unfortunately the creator isn’t even going to be the coder any longer. It was mentioned that he was going to be a “technical consultant” which means someone else will have to learn all of the code that he has programmed. That is also really disappointing.
I have been a fan of ABC (yeah I am the 1% in the poll) and have been using it for years now. It’s simple to use, and gets the job done. For my Ubuntu laptop I use Deluge which is upcoming bittorrent client for Ubuntu and it works very well, and has a similar UI for uTorrent.
Damn, why??
uTorrent is just another perfect app, which will die soon.
I don’t think it’s that big of a deal…in fact, this is good. utorrent will be one step closer to being compatible with the whole bittorrent technology…and well, now soon utorrent will run on linux even? ^^
Have a problem with it? Go ahead, use utorrent, just block utorrent and BitTorrent, Inc.’s IP address ranges in PeerGuardian 2, no more calling home, or wahtever you may think will come