What is uTorrent? How is it different from BitTorrent?

Question

What is uTorrent and how is it different from BitTorrent? What is it used for? Where is a tutorial? What is BitTorrent?

Answer 1

µTorrent is just a different client for the Bittorrent protocol. µTorrent would have to be one of the most 'respected' and popular BitTorrent clients for Windows.

According to Wikipedia, BitTorrent is:

A peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used for distributing large amounts of data. BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files. BitTorrent protocol allows users to receive large amounts of data without putting the level of strain on their computers that would be needed for standard Internet hosting

Now this is where it starts getting a bit confusing. BitTorrent is:

• A protocol
• A software company
• A program

The company BitTorrent, Inc. develops and distributes a program called BitTorrent which is just one of the many programs that work with the BitTorrent protocol. See this Lifehacker Hive Five on the Best BitTorrent Applications for other recommended BitTorrent clients

When people talk about 'torrents', they are most likely talking about the set of files they are downloading using the BitTorrent protocol.

Answer 2

uTorrent is a program that uses the bittorrent protocol to share files. It's generally accepted as one of the best clients on Windows, and certainly the best for it's resource usage.

Answer 3

Bittorrent is the name of the protocol AND a program.

Bittorrent the company purchased Utorrent, If you are talking about programs, Bittorrent is simply a rebranded version of Utorrent with no additional or different features.

Answer 4

Bittorrent is the peer-to-peer sharing protocol (and its programm in one, the core UI if you will), uTorrent is the programm that utilizes the Bittorrent protocol in order do download and share files.

utorrent, despite its mixed and/or unsustainable opinions whether its in bed with the media giants or not because the utorrent author sold its source, is one of the best download clients for .torrent files out there.

So far nothing has been able to beat utorrent to its size, options and resource usage!

Though there are open source, thus perhaps safer, alternatives like Vuze or Deluge.

Answer 5

BitTorrent is a protocol for file sharing, uTorrent is a program that implements/uses this protocol to share files.

It's like the difference between HTTP and Firefox. Though Firefox is only a client (not a server); it only implements the client side of the protocol.

Though, there's also a program called BitTorrent, which was the original BitTorrent client, and according to wikipedia, it's now (after version 6.0) only a re-branded version of uTorrent.