A better way to find torrents | Bangkok Post: tech

APP Shot

Way back in the last decade a few weeks ago, I wrote a review of a small desktop program that you could use to search for torrents. And as the second decade of the millennium dawned, the main website for that program disappeared.

There’s a lot of interesting material on the Internet. Not all of it is suitable for Mom, but Bit Che makes much of it more accessible.

Well, that's okay. It seems that we can barely keep up with the evolution of software, and once again, an even better program has already appeared to do the job. Bit Che is the slightly strange name for the best torrent search I've seen, including online.

This program searches more torrent sites, with more precision, and presents the results in more human-logical form than the one I reviewed earlier. The programmer, Chip Warner of California, says as I write this review that Bit Che will search 54 torrent sites, about a third of which require no registration.

There is no learning curve here. Searching for torrents merely requires that you type in relevant search terms, sort of like Google. If you want to locate songs by Tata Young, type in her name.

The list of results is barebones, but has two super-helpful features.

The first: Right click on the individual torrent, and you immediately get a list of files in the torrent, which can be useful. But you also can choose to open the actual torrent site and see the download that is referenced.

Either way, Bit Che will download or open your torrent in your default torrent downloader, making the whole operation super simple.

I just want to stress once again to sceptical readers that there is nothing illegal about torrents, and many companies use torrents as a sales device, including Hollywood movie sellers. So while lots of pirated material is available (see screen shot), terabytes of legal and useful files are available with this technology.

Young Mr Warner has an advanced version of Bit Che you can buy, but the free version is actually superior, in my opinion. He explains his Bit Che, and keeps it for download, on his website at convivea.com.