BitComet is the best, no spyware or malware also you have control over all settings and options. Would not use anything else, since the good old eDonkey network was officially discontinued on September 28th, 2005. I have been using BitComet ever since the eDonkey network closed down and its clean and easy. BitComet has not been updated since December 31st, 2013 because its perfect.
I prefer converts sensible torrents into UpToBox direct links Now, µTorrent is mining bitcoins, so I use a modded µTorrent 2.2.1 client.
Utorrent is now bloated unfortunately, qbitorrent is similar to the earlier version of UTorrent and works fine
TORRENT: utorrent I don't really care what software dose what. it comes down to how much Advertising and malware inside it.
It's as fast as the swarm seeds you No matter what torrentclient you use. ps, utorrent (microtorrent) is from the makers of Bittorrent.
That is a risk one takes regardless of the download method. Perhaps an option like Sandboxie would be a good choice for you. Install your downloaded program in a sandbox, if things go afoul, just delete the sandbox and create a new one. < shrugs > P.S. When installing anything, pay close attention to what each screen is asking. That will eliminate 95% of the advertising and the so called "browser hijacks". Way too many people just click OK to everything and then wonder what happened to their homepage and search engine.
I suspect transmission's rates also have something to do with the OS, I have set up NAS4Free on another box and transmission is a part of that package. Yeah, I picked up on the "micro" the moment I first saw the "µ". I was into radio long before computers and a microfarad, symbolized as µF, is a unit of measurement for capacitors.
It's always also hardware related and the max speed of the used internet connection, what's not related is which software is used ps, i didn't have the energy to lookup the correct ASCII code for the symbol
The systems here are comparable, both quad core, µtorrent on the 3 GHz ( MSI A88x-G45 ) Windows 7, Transmission on the 2.7 ( or was it 2.4 ? ) GHz ( MSI FM2-A75MA-E35 ) NAS4Free package. Nothing is overclocked at the moment. Gigabit intranet with the bottleneck being an old HP laptop ( 6910p ) used to connect to and distribute ( and isolate from, when needed ) the internet via WiFi at 54 Mb/s, also Windows 7. Transmission wins hands down. < shrugs > Sucks getting old, doesn't it ? LOL Copy/paste is your friend.