BitTorrent changed the way we download movies, television, music, and software. The original tools for using BitTorrent, while functional, seem archaic compared with many of the available choices. RSS subscriptions for automatic downloads, bandwidth throttling, remote interfaces, there's so much more than simple downloading in many of the alternatives to the original BitTorrent client. Reader's selected 48 different apps for this category, but the bulk of reader's choice votes fell on four specific software applications.
Reader's Choice: uTorrent tops the list of popular BitTorrent clients with a solid 46% of total reader votes. Technically the name is µTorrent, not uTorrent, but I find it less confusing to refer to it alphabetically rather than with a symbol, not unlike referring to Prince by a name rather than an unpronounceable symbol. uTorrent also happens to be my favorite solution for downloading torrents. It handles simultaneous downloads extremely well with highly configurable bandwidth throttling on a per download basis. Quick-resume is an excellent way to make sure interrupted downloads complete. And the RSS downloader neatly handles subscriptions with embedded torrents.
2) Vuze (formerly Azureus) received 19% of reader votes for best free BitTorrent client. In it's old form, Azureus was my favorite client application, but with the new focus on searching for downloads, I find Vuze to be too clunky. I also don't like that it installs the Ask.com search bar. The actual BitTorrent client portion of Vuze is still great, with many comparable features to uTorrent, including per download bandwidth control, RSS subscriptions, and prioritizing certain downloads. One new feature of Vuze I do like is the ability to create a personalized peer network based on who your friends are in the peer universe.
3) BitTorrent, the original application came in third in polling with 9% of reader's choice votes. Tallying the results is the first time I looked at the "official" BitTorrent client in ages because the user interface simply wasn't worth bothering with in the past. Apparently they thought so too, the newest version of the client is based directly on uTorrent with the addition of what their calling Delivery Network Accelerator, which sounds similar to RedSwoosh.
4) BitComet placed 4th in voting with 8% of total reader's selecting it as their favorite. In addition to many of the common torrent downloading features, BitComet includes direct download of embedded Web videos. BitComet also includes a feature similar to the Vuze friend sharing called Torrent Share, which allows you to share torrents with other BitComet users. Multiple instance HTTP downloading adds an additional download option to make this a multi-scenario download manager.
The remaining 82% of readers' votes are spread among the other 44 apps.
