Ever since BitTorrent was introduced to me, I chose Azureus as my BT client not only because it’s feature-packed but also because it gave me the fastest download speed possible in my DSL connection (512 kbps downstream / 256 kbps upstream). Azureus is built from Java and thus uses Java Virtual Machine (JVM). I didn’t mind using Azureus on my desktop PC because it has enough DDR RAM to run Azureus along with bunch of other application all at the same time. One disadvantage is that Java applications tend to use a lot of RAM after prolonged use because of JVM overhead. On my laptop I had trouble using Azureus because JVM sucks most out of my Penitum M 1.5 Ghz processor and 384 Mb DDR RAM (My laptop actually have 512 Mb RAM but 128 Mb is shared with graphics card). I tried other BT clients such as BitComet but I couldn’t get all the features in Azureus. Some features in other BT clients are implemented in a different fashion to get the same result but I prefered Azureus’ way. In the end I gave up using BitTorrent in my laptop.
Lately, I tested the recent release of µTorrent 1.3 and I was surprised that I am getting decent download speed comparable to Azureus, sometimes even faster, without the ridiculous overhead of JVM. It does not need any installation at all. Just downloaded it and you’re ready to seed and leech. With such a small footprint, I wonder how µTorrent achieves this performance. My laptop will love this BT client.
µTorrent at a glance (taken from the official website):
- Multiple simultaneous downloads
- Smart bandwidth usage
- File level priorities
- Configurable bandwidth scheduling
- Global and per-torrent speed limiting
- Quickly resumes interrupted transfers
- UPnP support (WinXP only)
- Supports popular protocol extensions
- Trackerless support (Mainline DHT)
- Localized to different languages
- Typical memory use less than 6 MB
- Incredibly small: 115 KB (slightly varies from each release but is still very small)
Azureus is a very powerful BitTorrent client. I won’t argue because it’s true; however, I’m switching to µTorrent because I need a fast BT client without much memory consumption. I’ll miss some features of Azureus not present in µTorrent but most of the features I like in Azureus are implemented nicely in µTorrent too that’s why in just a matter of days I’m fully convinced that µTorrent is going to be my BT client of choice from now on. µTorrent is still very young compared to other BT clients and it is gaining more users because of its efficiency.
Links:
µTorrent official website: http://www.utorrent.com
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