We need to see more programs like Utorrent, programs that are not ‘bloatware’. Ludvig can do it, why can’t you?<\/p>\n
\u00a0A few months ago, I pretty much thought having decent software weighing in at 1 megabyte (let alone 130 kilobytes!) was a pipe dream but that’s before I got my hands on a copy of \u00b5Torrent (a BitTorrent client).\u00a0 When I first downloaded the software back in September 2005 when \u00b5Torrent was first released, Ludvig can do it, why can’t you? I figured it was probably just a novelty application that weighed in at just over 100 kilobytes (compressed binary).\u00a0 In the era of Java applications that take 100 megabytes of memory for a single application, I’m pretty much relieved anytime I see a native Win32 application that uses less than 20 megabytes of RAM.\u00a0 Anyone who even remotely knows me knows that I really have a low tolerance for bloated software so I figured \u00b5Torrent was worth humoring.\u00a0 Little was I prepared to be blown away by a fully functional \u00b5Torrent client that did pretty much everything I needed it to do and I haven’t even ran in to any obvious bugs these past few months.<\/p>\n
Unlike many sloppy applications that make a mess of the registry and shared DLL files in Windows, \u00b5Torrent didn’t even need to be installed!\u00a0 It just ran off of the tiny 100 KB executable and the only install it did was put a desktop shortcut to the executable.\u00a0 Once \u00b5Torrent loaded in a matter of milliseconds, it was ready to rock and contained itself in less than 5 megabytes of system memory which is insane by today’s standards.\u00a0 From a features stand point, \u00b5Torrent may not have all the features of some of the heavier BitTorrent clients but it does have everything that 99% of the population wants.<\/p>\n
Although \u00b5Torrent is still a small player among Torrent clients from a marketshare standpoint, every person that I have ever recommended the software to has switched to \u00b5Torrent because no one likes bloatware.\u00a0 Some Linux vendors like SuSE who distribute their software via the BitTorrent protocol specifically point to \u00b5Torrent as a nice little Torrent client to download SuSE Linux.\u00a0 Considering the fact that \u00b5Torrent came out of nowhere just last September, it has enjoyed tremendous success and has already been downloaded more than half a million times from the official \u00b5Torrent website alone.<\/p>\n
I was so fascinated by the software that I decided to contact \u00b5Torrent author Ludvig Strigeus from Sweden who works as a programmer for a company in the automotive industry (talent wasted in my opinion).\u00a0 We had a nice conversation over Skype and it turns out that Ludvig had only worked on \u00b5Torrent for a few months in his free time after work.\u00a0 Ludvig still prefers the old Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 because of its low memory foot print and fast user interface and he used it to write \u00b5Torrent entirely from scratch with the exception of a basic runtime-library functions.\u00a0 This explains why \u00b5Torrent is so tight and works completely independently of any shared DLL files in Windows.\u00a0 I also had the opportunity to clarify the meaning of “\u00b5” in the name which as I suspected represented the scientific SI symbol for “micro” since \u00b5Torrent obviously lives up to its name.<\/p>\n
In any case, I highly recommend that you give \u00b5Torrent a try since it will pretty much run as-is without an installer.\u00a0 I even go as far as keeping a copy on my USB key so that I can run it directly off USB on any computer I use but I usually just copy it to the host machine just to have it there permanently.\u00a0 If anything, this should be a lesson to the software industry as a whole who always give the excuse that it’s just too expensive to write good tight code.\u00a0 Now I get to say:\u00a0 Ludvig can do it, why can’t you?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u00b5Torrent<\/a>
\nDigg Post<\/a>
\nZdnet Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We need to see more programs like Utorrent, programs that are not ‘bloatware’. Ludvig can do it, why can’t you? \u00a0A few months ago, I pretty much thought having decent software weighing in at 1 megabyte (let alone 130 kilobytes!) was a pipe dream but that’s before I got my hands on a copy of \u00b5Torrent (a BitTorrent client).\u00a0 When<\/p>\n