Sunday, December 11th 2011
uTorrent Goes Freemium: $24.95/Yr Option For Extra Features
Well, it looks like the freemium model of selling software is working quite well in the industry, as Bram Cohen's very popular BitTorrent application, uTorrent, has just adopted this model. Known for being fast, efficient and light on system resources, it has now gained a few pounds, sorry features in version 3, some of which are available only for a subscription of $24.95 per year. These include things like an antivirus scanner powered by BitDefender, a media player and integrated support for converting popular video file types such as MPEG4, H.264, Theora, and VP8, as well as MP3, AAC and AC-3 audio files. The media player is interesting, in that it allows playback of videos that are still downloading. Note that this feature is also available in the free version.
For those that still want to hang on to the lean and mean free version, it's still available and isn't going away any time soon. Both versions can be compared here. Perhaps it's ironic that this legal application which is often used for software "piracy" can now itself be pirated… Cohen's take on this will be interesting.
Source:
TechSpot
For those that still want to hang on to the lean and mean free version, it's still available and isn't going away any time soon. Both versions can be compared here. Perhaps it's ironic that this legal application which is often used for software "piracy" can now itself be pirated… Cohen's take on this will be interesting.
92 Comments on uTorrent Goes Freemium: $24.95/Yr Option For Extra Features
Torrents are fast, free and reliable on my end. Torrents have no issues maxing out my connection. And if torrents give your routers problems, you are either misconfigured, or have a really shitty router. Still trumps all other current options, imo. It's pros far outweigh the cons as far as I am concerned.
Luckily for those that want utorrent and not crap utorrent 3* you can find it at oldapps.com website like so many older pre F*-up program version.
You would think that utorrent would remove the stupid from their website and have basic decent features like download a good version and list version available for download like on oldapps.com .
Maybe the hated google / youtube / yahoo / facebook / ??? new look mental virus has attacked utorrent developers as well. :toast:
I use utorrent because that has been installed for ages on my machine, if there's a better alternative? post it and i might use that instead.
That said, unless people feel sorry for the guy that's charging for these extra services, he's going to find it hard to receive any sort of payment for his efforts.
People who automatically discount usenet have never used it, probably because you have to pay. You can get much more done, much faster.
Once you go usenet you don't go back...
Try racking up that kind of content usage with torrents. Also, keep in mind that was done in ~11 days.
I decided to work out how much I upload in the same time period and its 18.1274414 gigabytes lol
I can see why you would go usenet to avoid that wasted bandwidth :p
I never liked the idea of torrents its a bad fix to a hard problem because it rely' on humans
and all my equipment handles 10 or 15k connections without a issue but not everyone is that knowledgeable
server with a FAT pipe > lots of clients with tiny pipes .......
I torrent some stuff but I avoid it as much as possible its to slow and I don't wanna waste the bandwidth to waste seeding back if I can help it
Anyhow, my point was that for anyone who thinks that pirating is ok, insisting on being paid for intellectual property would be immoral.
rant
Unfortunately today the words <file sharing> are becoming a synonym to the word "piracy" which is wrong. Because P2P service was never meant to be like this.
Today Teh Interwebz is chocking under a weight of pornography, lame mainstream music, mediocre video games and crappy series in hd. Because of this we're losing our freedom, we're getting tracked and spied. We get data caps, traffic throttling and all that jazz.
Because of this today, when you say that you download bootlegs, some abandonware or just linux distros nobody will believe you.
I don't wanna fight for someone else's war, honestly :rolleyes:
/rant
And that kind of usage is easy with torrents, I've done it. The two private tracker sites I'm a member of both have my totals for upload and download in the TB range, and I've only been a member for a few months, and that doesn't include my numbers from the non-private sites that aren't tracked.
I've used usenet, don't make the assumption that those that don't like it have never used it. I stopped using it because I didn't think it was worth paying for because it offered nothing over torrents. If you know how to use torrents and where to find the proper torrents, and join a few private trackers, torrenting is just as good as what you get from usenet so IMO usenet is not worth paying for.
People who use usenet, especially those that say "some people don't seed" have never used a private tracker that requires you to seed 1:1. Private trackers are so much better, and you almost always get saturated connections when downloading because so many people are seeding. Most people on private trackers actually seed more than they download to make sure they keep a good ratio.
My top speed downloading from a single server is around 6Mbyte/sec whilst by using a torrent client I can easily and frequently get up to 10,8Mbyte/sec (saturating a 100mbit fttb connection). I have no problem finding 720/1080p content. Just get a decent router worth more than 40$.
In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say that usenet has no benefits to anyone with a bandwidth cap. I pull over 3MB/s on most torrents I grab. I have yet to find a decent anime irc bot. Most of them seem home hosted to me, judging by the connection reliability and speeds. Exactly.
forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=123040
The next major change you will see is a fresh approach to creating a no-nonsense and free torrenting experience. You are all very familiar with how we have paid the bills so far. These new changes mark our next step towards finding that difficult balance between keeping our lights on and providing a positive user experience. This new build will display a featured torrent at the top of your torrent list. This featured torrent space will be used to offer a variety of different types of content. We are working towards bringing you offers that are relevant to you. This means films, games, music, software...basically anything that you will find interesting. We may not get it right on the first try but we will continue to improve our efforts based on your feedback.
We are also leveraging these offers to directly benefit the artist community including filmmakers, recording artists, game developers and more. We are going to show the world what all of you here already know: that torrenting can be used for good.
I knew something worse than the retarded great apps was going to happen and I was right. I'm sick to my stomach what they did with one of my favourite little tools.
Does anyone know a client that does what utorrent was meant to and originally did - just working with damn torrents and nothing else?