Peer-to-Peer Systems and Me (Part 2)

After spewing out my philosophy with p2p systems, let’s continue the discussion…

So what are my options when I don’t have access to the content I want? How can I get episodes of Smallville that are too hard to come by in Hawaii? p2p to the rescue. As a Mac user, I’m only going to cover Mac p2p apps. Sorry if you’re a Windows user, Susie.

The main p2p systems out there are of the Gnutella or BitTorrent varieties. Each technology offers up content but differs in the way they operate. For Mac OS X, I’ve used the Acqulite client to search the Gnutella-verse. Limewire is another popular app, but I’ve heard bad things about Limewire doing bad stuff to your system so I avoid it. Acqulite is simple and straightforward with a clutter free interface. In general though, Gnutella file transfers aren’t blazing quick.

For faster transfer speeds, you have to look at BitTorrent clients. The way BT works is pretty interesting, and the end result is fast transfers (even with huge files). As reader T pointed out, Azureus is a great BT client that is cross platform, working on Mac and Windows. It has a great wizard that steps users through the setup process. But you may need to get geeky at times if you need to configure your router or firewall to allow BT traffic through. Azureus also has a great self-updating feature that uses the BT technology to quickly transfer newer versions of Azureus to you. I’d recommend using Azureus, but…

New to the BitTorrent scene for the Mac is a new app called Xtorrent, still in beta development. Xtorrent is made by David Watanabe, the same guy that’s made the beautiful Newsfire RSS aggregator. While Azureus looks pretty good, you have to take a look at Xtorrent.

It’s interface is clean and elegant, not overly sexy or over the top like porn stars like Jenna Jameson (wait, maybe not so anymore). Xtorrent also features a built-in search function that you can find torrent files using Google and Yahoo by default. I’ve never noticed if Azureus features a search, but an integrated search is pretty cool and is a “no duh” addition. Feel free to use the big torrent trackers out there or some of the lesser known ones too if the Xtorrent integrated search doesn’t turn up what you’re looking for. When Xtorrent goes into production, you’ll have to pay for it though.

And hey, you know what? That’s it! That’s all the p2p stuff that I’ve used – Acqulite and Azureus (and getting to know Xtorrent). It’s a short list, but very effective… as a last resort.