Downloading Torrents For An Idiot-Help Please - Ajarn Forum

columbia · 9th May 2007, 09:27

Just got high speed internet installed at my house so there I am all excited about downloading entire albums in the wink of an eye but I've got a problem. I downloaded u torrent, bitcomet and ares to see which one suits my purposes but the only thing i can download on is ares. The others find my musical requirements, open a document file in my documents, show the download in the download window and then proceed to do absolutely nothing. At the moment I've got a hip hop collection of about 500mb on bitcomet and it hasn't downloaded a single thing in the space of 20 minutes.

As i'm a novice at this file sharing lark is there anything i could be doing wrong or do you good folks recommend a better torrent downloader that's dead simple like ares?

Ares is great. Find the file, hit download and forget it (nice and easy for a drone like me) but their selection of downloads isn't the most extensive in the world.

Thanks all.

AjarnYaiMak · 9th May 2007, 09:44

Utorrent also encrypts the transmission to avoid the isp blocking the ports. Try it.
That may be the problem now.

bet · 9th May 2007, 10:02

I concur, utorrent is the way ahead.

Take a look at defender's stick on optimizing it, jolly good stuff.

zehner · 9th May 2007, 10:26

you should try soulseek for your music columbia..it's what i use for my muso needs http://www.slsknet.org/download.html

it's a file-sharing program..you hook up with millions of other people online and can do searches for classic and obscure tracks. torrents are great for tv and movie stuff but i find that soulseek does the job better for tunes

btw..i use azureus for torrents: http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

columbia · 9th May 2007, 11:36

Cheers all.

Zehner. I just downloaded soulseek. Looks good. Is their search engine a bit on the slow side sometimes mate? First search loads of results in a millisecond. 2nd search no results after 30 seconds (nothing obscure in the request either ). Same on the 3rd search. Did a quick test for "elvis" cos that should get mega hits and nothing after a minute.

russellsimpson · 9th May 2007, 12:33

For some reason I've thought that if you are looking for Stones, Dylan, Niel Young, etc....soulseek ain't the place to go. (So I haven't bothered to register.)

Not trying to highjack Columbia, but is my assumption above correct?

Still looking for a download site myself. A "Glitch" (read "stupidity" wiped out my entire music collection which I had stored in the Kazaa folder.

.

defender · 9th May 2007, 13:12

Mate for torrent needs with Windows then utorrent is the best by a street. Download it and then check out my thread in the forum here for optimising it. Get a feel for it and then let me know if you have any specific queries.

Soulseek is the best for DLing songs at a time, although it's OK for full albums too. I always DL full albums from a torrent and torrents are the most efficient way to DL large files (movies, applications etc.)

There are loads of sites all over the web that explain how different P2P systems work and how to get started.

Which ISP do you have? In any case I would ignore all references to "portforwarding" until you get the hang of it - even then it may be superfluous to your requirements, it makes no difference to me at all. Other internet users swear by it, but IME it's a waste of time!

Stamp · 9th May 2007, 13:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by columbia

As i'm a novice at this file sharing lark is there anything i could be doing wrong or do you good folks recommend a better torrent downloader that's dead simple like ares?

Have a look at http://forums.bitcomet.com/ to get more knowledge.

Stamp

zehner · 9th May 2007, 13:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by columbia

Is their search engine a bit on the slow side sometimes mate?

ya can be a tad slow at times. i just cancel the page and re-enter the search request. that usually works a lot faster.

Quote:

Originally Posted by russellsimpson

I've thought that if you are looking for Stones, Dylan, Niel Young, etc....

there are massive amounts of the above on the shared folders of soulseek users. they could be most popular searches in fact

columbia · 9th May 2007, 13:37

Cheers for all the advice and comments lads. I'll give them all a try. I'm a bit of a dunce at computers. My daughter had to show me how to cut and paste and drop and drag. She's 10 years old.

-----

Quote:

Originally Posted by russellsimpson

For some reason I've thought that if you are looking for Stones, Dylan, Niel Young, etc....soulseek ain't the place to go. (So I haven't bothered to register.)

Not trying to highjack Columbia, but is my assumption above correct?

I was looking for some obscure old school hip hop russell and didn't get any results so I stuck "Elvis" in as a test. I thought if I don't get any hits for him then I'm doing something wrong somewhere.

champagne charlie · 9th May 2007, 13:56

Could it be a simple matter of checking to see if the torrents are adequately seeded?
If not enough folks are seeding, it doesn't matter which client you use, it's gonna be slow.

zehner · 9th May 2007, 14:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by columbia

obscure old school hip hop

try the album names as well and make sure they're spelt correctly

SageAndOnion · 9th May 2007, 14:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by defender

but IME it's a waste of time!

I found it helped my speeds - plus I just love that green tick (although you can get that with uPnP mapping).

defender · 9th May 2007, 14:43

Yep I either the get the green tick or I don't - regardless of whether I have port forwarded or not it seems. I have the uPnP enabled.

Some days I do, some days I don't - I've tinkered with everything but IMO it's down to something at the ISP end that determines my connectivity!

bet · 9th May 2007, 14:52

I used to forward my ports, but found there was no difference on speeds. My router supports UPnP, so I enabled that and I get that nice green tick on utorrent, which does help when uploading.