BitComet 1.31

If you were to go for any of the torrent clients available for download free of charge on the internet, one viable option would be to go for BitComet. The interesting thing about this piece of software, interesting enough to convince you to download it, is that it goes beyond a simple torrent client. BitComet is in fact download management software, meaning it is a torrent, HTTP and FTP client bundled together.

Don’t think for one second that just because BitComet does not cost you a thing, it will be awkward and clumsy, because you would be wrong in doing so. BitComet is very easy to use (it was in fact the first torrent client I ever used and I had no problem getting started with it), is fast and is powerful. And once you take a glance under the hood and play with the advanced settings a bit, you can speed up your torrent downloads tenfold (up to 10x faster).

For the user that runs the Microsoft developed Windows operating system on his computer, getting to grips with BitComet’s UI (user interface) is going to be a piece of cake. This is because BitComet’s looks are incredibly similar to those of Windows Explorer – which is a good thing, as you will instantly realize where and what you must click. There are a few basic BitTorrent templates thrown in, but you should not have a problem with them.

On the left hand side of the window you will notice a features tree, complete with links to various torrent sites. The main problem with P2P file sharing is locating torrents to download. You need not bother yourself about it as BitComet provides a detailed and lengthy list right inside it. After you select a torrent you want to download, BitComet pops up a dialog window asking you where you would like to save the torrent, and which files within it you would like to save. The download process then starts, and a whole bunch of data is presented to you: download and upload speed, how much of the torrent has been downloaded (percentage), how much time you have to wait until the download is complete, seeds and peers, ratio, and so on.

If at any time you want to stop the torrent download, things couldn’t be easier. There are big, flashy, easy to recognize icons at the top. Just click the icon that corresponds to the task you want to perform.

The feature I like best about BitComet is its preview function. The preview button can be found at the top of the window, amongst the big, flashy icons I mentioned earlier. The functionality provided by this button is quite simple, but at the same time quite useful: after the download has been initiated and while it is still running, you can preview said download. In the case of music files, you can start listening to the track before the download is complete; and in the case of movie files, you can play it before the download has finished. This particular feat is achieved because BitComet forces the torrent to be downloaded sequentially and not randomly.

There’s one other BitComet feature I found quite useful: intelligent disk cache. This feature, once activated, will take the strain of your computer’s resources while BitComet is downloading large amounts of data. For download speeds in excess of 500 kb/s, you can turn on intelligent disk cache and the data will be cached – the end result is that the disk isn’t accessed as often and your PC will not slow down during the download process.

BitComet comes with extensive language support; there are in fact localized versions of BitComet available in 52 languages. The thing is that even though these localized versions provide the same functionality as the English one, the translation in some cases is quite poor.

Pros
Easy to use
Torrent, HTTP and FTP client
Preview mode
Intelligent disk cache
Available in a total of 52 languages
Comes free of charge

Cons
Works only on Windows
Poor translation for non-English versions.

BitComet has been reviewed by George Norman on 08 Sep 2009. Based on the user interface, features and complexity, Findmysoft has rated BitComet 5 out of 5 stars, naming it Essential