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Now you are ready to roll. Go to either
torrentspy.com or another torrent search engine of your choice,
type in something you are looking for, and if anything comes up,
click the links it lists. It will ask you where to save the
'torrent' file. This is a super small file, usually around 30k,
that has all the directions on how and where to find the file to
download from. Once that is downloaded, open up BitLord and
click the Open button to open the torrent file you just
downloaded. It will load into its list and begin downloading the
actual files now. You can setup BitLord to download a cetain
number of files simultaneously, and when one is done, it will
start downloading the next one.
What are peers? They are other people who
are currently downloading or sharing the file you are looking
for. The more peers listed next to the file, the faster the
download will be. You might also see a number of "seeds", seeds
are the full copies of the actual files. The more seeds, the faster
downloads. So if you have a choice between one or another
download, and if they are both the same file, go for the one
with more seeds and more peers. The fewer the seeds and peers,
the slower it will be for the download to complete.
Once you have started downloading, your torrent
client
will say it is looking for peers. At this time it is connecting
and looking to see how many people out there have the file you
are looking for. It does take a little bit of time for
your torrent client to get up to speed, so be patient. I have been
reaching upwards of around 80kbps on some fast downloads.
The way it works is kind of neat. While you
download the file, you are downloading the file from other
people who are either sharing the complete file, or other people
who are also currently downloading the file. When you download a
file, you too are also sharing the file out to others that are
downloading. Don't worry about sharing slowing your download
speed down. Download speeds and upload speeds are two separate
things, and you can adjust your upload speed with your torrent
client to
the lowest if you wish.
When the file has completely downloaded, you
will get a pop-up in the system tray, and it will read that file
is at 100%.
At this point, you have completely downloaded the file(s), but
it is still being shared (uploaded). You can do one of two
things now, continue to share it, or take it off your list which
would not share it anymore.
It kind of works like Kazaa, you download small
pieces of the big file from a lot of other people and torrent
puts them together into one big file for you. If by chance all
other peers go offline and there is no one to download from, you
probably will get a message in the listing indicating
that it can't find anyone to download from. This is ok, and
sometimes normal. Just let the window sit. It will continue to
look for peers to get the file from and when they are available
it will pick up where it left off. This is also true if you stop
a download and had to reboot your PC. Just resume your download
from the list, and it will automatically resume where it
left off in downloading.
Right now BitTorrent is kind of a "geek" thing,
so I think the majority of the people that use it know what they
are doing. Because of this, about 99% of the files you are
searching for are the real deal, unlike Kazaa which is now
flooded with bogus renamed files. I hope BitTorrent stays this
way, but it will be hard to tell until it becomes more
mainstream. But don't worry about slow downloads, I have been
able to download files that are 700MB in size in under a day.
There are still a LOT of people that use BitTorrent even though
it's not "mainstream", and it's becoming more popular everyday.
Hope this helps you out in using BitTorrent. The
more people you tell who use it will make BitTorrent become a
bigger and better thing. This is a very nice alternative to
using Kazaa.
***One more thing, if you are getting very slow
downloads like I first did, you might need to configure your
router to let this stuff get through right away. I configured
mine and went from around 3kbps downloads up to around 50kbps
downloads.
Here is a very good site on how to configure your router to
let this stuff through. If you don't know how to configure your
router, you probably shouldn't be doing it in the first place,
and don't ask me for help! |
