Why Pay To Pirate?
I’ll pay for music (now, thanks iTunes), I’ll pay for software but why on Earth would I pay to pirate something? I’m talking about Xtorrent. Let’s face it, if you’re using torrents you’re probably pirating something and if you aren’t you wouldn’t need Xtorrent anyway. So why pay for it?
This article is mainly in response to an article I saw entitled Find Xtorrent’s Inner Tivo. I just wanted to pose the question why would you pay out for Xtorrent when you can do it (or near enough) for free.
Looking at the Xtorrent website, the first feature that it really touts is easy searching. Granted, the ability to type into a little box and press enter is fairly easy and pretty much standard but the results are anything but easy! Let’s take a look at a result.
Searching for “Scrubs” in Xtorrent.
When you type in what you’re looking for, three tabs shoot up across the top looking in Google, Yahoo! and you also have a torrent listing. So there are the results. There’s a lot of them and they aren’t ordered in any form of discernible fashion that I can make out (by default). What you get is a mess of files that you have to sort through yourself to find the one(s) you are looking for and then download that. You’ll notice that because I’ve not actually paid for this application, random downloads are grayed out. This is because Xtorrent disables results randomly if you haven’t purchased it. Can I just ask what is so easy about all this? It would be easier to head to my favourite torrent site and search for what I want then list by most recently updated to get the newest episode.
If you’re looking for a truly easy search, I’d recommend TVShows. This application will automatically download the torrent files for favourite television shows. All you have to do is “easy search”, by typing in the name of the show you want to watch and then select which episode you’d like to start with. You can even select the quality of the shows, where to save torrent files and whether you want it to automatically open any torrent file it downloads for you with whatever your preferred client is. That is easy searching.
Doing the same search for “Scrubs” in TVShows.
I think TVShows pretty much covers the second feature of Xtorrent the website lists, too. Subscribe to content, easily. I can’t think of anything easier than TVShows implementation; just pressing one button saying “Subscribe” right in the search results and selecting the episode you want to subscribe from. Xtorrent has a little button that I nearly missed which, when pressed, allows you to subscribe to RSS torrentcasts. So I have to go and find a torrentcast of a particular show in order to subscribe to it? I don’t think that’s as easy and just pressing the one button but I could be wrong.
Bare in mind that TVShows is not a torrent client, it simply provides that easy search and subscribe method that’s better than Xtorrent. In order to actually download the content you’ll need a client, such as Transmission. Xtorrent itself is actually based on Transmission, so some of the other features on the Xtorrent website (for example automatic port configuration, time and user-activity sensitive bandwidth limits and so forth) are available for free via Transmission. If you really wanted the “best” torrent client, you could always go for Azureus but I’m just sticking with a lightweight Xtorrent beater at the moment.
Transmission downloading.
Xtorrent downloading.
Please note that I have nothing against Xtorrent; it’s aesthetically pleasing and it does the job. I just don’t see why anyone would pay for it. I’m not saying that people don’t deserve to be paid for their hard work and coding efforts but paying for a torrent client is just wrong. Some of the use of torrenting is that you’re getting something for free that you would usually have to pay for so there is no point in paying for something to get that. Especially when Xtorrent becomes useless if you don’t actually pay.
Would you ever pay for Xtorrent or other torrent client?
(Note: I do not support piracy.)
10:19 pm
Nice piece mate. I tried Xtorrent and I absolutely hated it; It feels too big and clumsy, the complete opposite of Transmission. I have Transmission auto-detect my downloads folder for new torrent files. If I click a torrent file in Safari, the torrent file downloads, Transmission picks it up, deleting the torrent file and sending out a Growl message to say so. I don’t even need to go into Transmission to have it work.
TVShows looks awesome too, these two apps will act as a really good combo, imagine a media center powered by them.
5:23 am
It’s the porn. Duh.
7:28 am
I like XTorrent; and I love the feeling of irony when you’re downloading the XTorrent crack… on XTorrent.
Transmission is awesome too… it’s way more simpler than XTorrent, and I generally use Transmission more.
TVShows is a nice a simple program… but I use shareTV.org to alert me when my shows are ready to download.
Nice article!
9:55 pm
Wow, TVshows is awesome. Can’t believe I haven’t heard of it.
3:49 pm
hey zzap: what is this xtorrent crack you speak of? i’ve been looking all over and can’t find a crack or serial without paying to join a site. please, inform me.
4:24 am
has anyone got the crack for xtorrent?
8:42 am
Plus, it does not help that the developer of Xtorrent and Acquisition (both 30 dollar pirating apps) is an complete douchebag. Support? No. If I’m paying for a program of any price, I better get some decent support. But, I guess if someone is stupid enough to pay this much for a pirating app they don;t deserve any support.
2:05 am
yeaa zzap… wat is the link to download the crack for xtorrent… i wanna feel what u feel… :p
9:12 am
I’m not really sure that there is a crack for Xtorrent… I have looked everywhere and even asked the people at KCNcrew, no one there has heard of, or found any kind of crack for it. zzap, are you bluffing? I’m not attacking your response, just asking.
3:49 pm
I found the crack on a torrent tracker a while ago… that’s what I was getting at when I said “I love the feeling of irony when you’re downloading the XTorrent crack… on XTorrent.” I’ll see if I can find the link again and link you guys.
1:21 pm
We are still waiting
5:36 pm
The crack is to download a copy of Transmission for free. It’s the same engine!
5:25 pm
how !!
3:00 pm
Still waiting…
Found this site while searching for crack for xtorrent
4:59 pm
We r still waiting
5:12 pm
If you’re desperate for xtorrent then download this copy, It’s kind of a cut down version of xtorrent, not sure why no one ever posts these in forums, probably because once a lot of people start downloading it’ll get cancelled, so download while you can =D
If not, just use transmission and get it to autodetect your downloads stack or whatever and maybe use nowtorrents.com as a replacement for the xtorrent search =]
Here’s the link for the cracked xtorrent:
http://rapidshare.com/files/75245480/texted.zip
5:19 pm
Oh and make sure you don’t upgrade the newest version because that’s basically like downloading a whole new xtorrent so you won’t have the cracked version anymore and you will get the annoying limitations as with the normal, unlicensed version.
5:32 pm
Hmm… you know what. I just recommend you just use transmission or something as I’ve just been trying this out and there’s no selective downloading =[
You’ll just have to keep waiting to get a full free version of xtorrent folks!
8:18 pm
this is good thanks! altho it’s 1.0 crack it works.
1.1 would be nice though!!!
holla
7:11 pm
True… I’ll keep an eye out and post a link on here if I find something!
3:02 am
what is the crack for xtorrent?