What is uTorrent and how to use it

Since the internet reached our homes, the possibilities of accessing infinite content on the web have increased exponentially. About ten years ago, we saw almost impossible to control a computer located on the other side of the planet remotely from our sofa, with sufficient quality to work comfortably and without cuts. And nowadays, with a computer and Internet connection we can do the unthinkable.

Of course, there are many ways to share files, but today we are going to build on the torrent. The torrent is just a kind of p2p downloads, or what is the same, peer to peer. This, in the language of Cervantes, means nothing more than sharing files between two machines or users . And the best-known torrent manager is uTorrent , which we're going to talk about today. It will allow us to share files, as well as download and allow others to download what we want . Keep reading and do not lose detail to get the most out of this useful tool.

The first thing to keep in mind is that uTorrent is available for both Mac and PC and Linux . We will have to enter its official website  and click on the green button that we will find in view to download it. The process will start automatically, downloading the appropriate installer for our operating system. Once downloaded, we just have to follow the steps that the installer shows us so that, finally, uTorrent is opened and working on our machine.

When opening the program for the first time, in its main screen we will see three clearly differentiated parts . The most important is the download space , where we will have different information about each download that we have in progress, as we will see later. On the left side we will have the sidebar , where we can discriminate which files we see on the screen according to their status: download, completed, active, inactive or all. At the bottom of the screen we will have an information panel with several tabs, where we can choose information such as the speed of loading and unloading in real time graphically,general information about the file in question, the folders for which it is composed, and so on.

It is very important once the program is installed and before starting to use it , that we make a correct configuration of it. In this way, the user experience will be more satisfactory , gaining speed in downloads and having all our content much more organized. They are five minutes worth investing in this series of things that we explain below.

In the general section of the preferences menu, we will have different options that can be explained by themselves. Options like the automatic start of the application when turning on our equipment, ask before leaving , start the downloads automatically or the language , for example. In short, the basic adjustments of use that the program allows us.

Another of the most important options for the proper functioning of uTorrent is the configuration of the bandwidth . Normally uTorrent manages it automatically (with the first box checked), but we can decide this manually. Well if you do not want torrent downloads to be made with all the bandwidth of your network, or because you want to limit it so that it does not exceed a certain number, you can adjust each value manually , both download and upload. If you have an internet rate with a certain amount of limited data , there is an option called limit rate , in which you can configure the amount of data that you allow the program to share, either in rise or fall, in a certain period of time.

And finally, the possibility of configuration that can help you the most when managing downloads with uTorrent is your programmer . In the tab that bears his name, you only have to activate the box and then you can configure it to your liking. Each cell corresponds to a range of one hour during each day of the week , and has a color code with four different options: unlimited, limit activated, only sowing and program disabled . With this you can configure the activity of the programdepending on the load that is normally in the network of your home, allowing while working with the computer uTorrent does not exceed a limit set by you in the bottom of the screen, while in hours of low network use, have the unlimited speed. 

Once the application is configured, it is time to start a download. To be able to download with uTorrent, we will first need to have the .torrent file of what we want to download. This file with the .torrent extension is nothing more than a small document that, when opened with uTorrent, gives you the basic information about what you want to obtain, and where you should download it from. We can get them across the network , in the typical "download music and movies" pages. In this post we will not name any, they are subject to a constant change, and perhaps within a time, they are no longer available.

But just a small search in Google is enough writing what we want to download with the last name "torrent" and it will not be easy to find it. We just have to download this file with a .torrent extension and, when opened, uTorrent will take care of the rest.

Once opened with uTorrent, it will appear on the download screen. The essential information to take into account are:

• The name of the file that we are downloading
• The progress bar of the download, in as much as one hundred
• The status of the download, as there will be files that are inactive for a certain period of time
• The loading and unloading speed , located in the "Speed" tab of the lower panel.

With this data we can monitor in real time the status of our download. Once the progress bar is completed and reaches 100%, it will be indicative that our download has been completed, so we will already have the file in the folder which we have indicated as a destination in the uTorrent preferences. Only we will have to open it with the corresponding program and enjoy it in our team.