uTorrent 1.7 was released today after several months in the making, and after being bought out by BitTorrent back in December 2006. Fear that the tiny little BitTorrent downloader would become a bloated sibling like it’s new older brother can be put to rest. This is the same ol’ uTorrent that we have all come to know and love…except with some notable new features.
Here’s what’s new in uTorrent 1.7:
- Full Vista compatibility
- Option to update to Beta versions of uTorrent
- Upload rate can be automatically limited
- Find local peers on the same network as you
- No more 65,536 piece limit on torrents, of course I don’t think I’ve ever downloaded a torrent with that many items.
- And there is a whole lot more…
The coolest thing in this version is that there is no longer a separate download for both the standalone and installer. They combined the two of them into one small 218KB download. Now when you go to run the file it will ask whether you want to install uTorrent or just run it without creating any shortcuts. It’s a simple and effective solution, and for that reason I love it.
So all of you who loved uTorrent in the past…don’t worry, it’s still the same just with a few added features and a lot of bug fixes. For the time being I would consider it to be bloat-free, but that doesn’t vouch for where the project could be headed in the future.
The next big thing that will be coming for uTorrent is a Mac OS X version. A few weeks ago TorrentFreak got their hands on a pre-alpha build and snapped a bunch of screenshots of it. They said that it made a great first impression, and that a public Beta will probably be available soon.
It would be interesting if someone could analyse the code to see if the buy-out had had any impact on this program, i.e. RIAA/MPAA spy code, DRM etc.
utorrent 1.6.0 for LIFE!
The Slasher wrote:
Well someone should do a thorough analysis and bring out the truth. Like this gentleman, i too have have similar doubts. But if utorrent comes out clean, i dont think any competion can come near.
i hope this wont be a silly question by before i comment here the total comments being shown are 4 whereas slasher, psiance and tinhed have commented till now. that makes the count to 3…not 4
i hope this isnt a silly question…
Salman Siddiqui wrote:
3 Comments and 1 Trackback = 4 Comments
got it
that was something new for me…thnx!
The only ‘feature’ I need from utorrent besides what it gives me now is a boost in speed. I have a feeling that’s not likely coz v.1.6.1 seems to be utilizing my bandwidth to the max. I foolishly tried more than one beta and always ended going back to the stable version coz the speed dropped drastically. Even after moving to the “Final” version these guys seem to be releasing newer builds all the time.
I understand your worries, but I am sure that they would have disclosed something like that if they had to do it. Otherwise if someone down the road determines that the software is spying on them it will essentially ruin all of their reputation.
Yep, Richard is exactly right. Unfortunately WordPress has no easy way for retrieving the actual number of comments. Heck, it even takes a small hack to separate out the trackbacks from the comments.
I haven’t really noticed any degredation in speed with the new version, in fact I think it is a little better. My entire Internet doesn’t hose up as bad as it used to when downloading Torrents.
I too haven’t noticed any speed drop. utorrent absolutely rox as far as stability and usefulness go