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Comment by cmsimike | Hacker News Reader

Wasn't uTorrent The Best Thing Ever when it first hit the scene? I seem to recall it was this application. It was about a 93k executable that didn't need to be installed. Just download and run. It was my go to torrent client of choice during my Windows days. Sad to see it become this.

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As annoyed as I am by the reactions here (uTorrent didn't maliciously install adware behind anyone's back), I moved to Mac in 2009 and stayed there until I decided to build an HTPC for my living room. First thing I did was install uTorrent, and I was confronted with so much bloat. There are ads INSIDE the torrent list, and there are options to stream video/music. Completely unexpected.

From what I understand, there hasn't been a client that's truly taken its place.

you should google utorrent toolbar mystery. many people have chosen not to install the toolbar and ended up with a toolbar.

Like others have noted, if you were happy with uTorrent in 2009, just use an older version.

There's really not much different with torrents in the last few years.

Magnet link support is the only thin I can think of.

What about security vulns

The new version runs ten ad networks' code.. I'd bet the 93k one is safer

Magnet links work fine in 2.2.1

> From what I understand, there hasn't been a client that's truly taken its place.

For myself and my brother, Transmission has handily replaced uTorrent. Simple, downloads torrents, lets me make new ones to send files between friends, and that's it. Perfect!

Indeed. I started using uTorrent back in 2006. It was VERY lightweight, and had a good and detailed documentation. And then things started to change: custom UI, styles, Ads, Video Player, Market (or something like an App Store)...

I met the creator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludvig_Strigeus) the other day, and he LOVES to micro-optimize. He's a genius, and made a vere light uTorrent (it was supposed to be a really light bittorrent client) and then he sold it to bittorrent and stopped developing it (and that's why it stopped being lightweight).

Awesome and interesting guy.

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