I love free software and I love torrent technology. uTorrent wasn't my first choice when I was still learning the ins and outs of “torrenting”, I'll admit. I tried other torrent downloaders after uTorrent, but I kept coming back to it and for good reasons.

There is so much bloatware out there these days, but not uTorrent. They have kept it lean and mean. How many feature-rich apps have you downloaded lately that are under 1 megabyte? Still, they add new features, such as how they now handle DHT and magnet links, without diluting their functionality or the interface, both of which continue to improve the usability. Their Preferences dialog window is so well-organized that it's a snap to get it setup just how you want it in minutes. I love what they've done with the Add Torrent dialog, especially the “don't ask again” button down in the corner, so I don't have to see it on every addition of a new torrent.

I used to be wary about downloading beta versions of programs, and still am to some extent. uTorrent Beta releases are the exception, however. They seem as stable as their final releases. I've never had a beta from them hog the CPU or crash. It just works. I leave uTorrent Beta up and running for hours, sometimes days, and if there were memory leaks or corruption I'd know it.

So, I'm one happy camper with this software and I highly recommend it to anyone as the standard for torrent applications. Always set your update preferences for Beta so you get the latest features and fixes before others do.