P2P client with Magnet Protocol?

September 15, 2005 12:53 PM

Can you recommend a P2P client that uses the Magnet Protocol?

There are many that use the Magnet Protocol (Limewire, Gnutella, Kazaa, etc.) I need a recommendation for one of them. My use is as follows: I collect and share many live concerts. Live Music Archive allows use of clients with Magnet Protocol to download the files. This would be an easy and convenient way to get these files. A secondary use would be to download the odd song that is out of print and I can't seem to find a copy to buy or that I might want to sample and can't find a sample via Amazon etc. And a tertiary use might be to download shows for timeshifted viewing. I do not want something that is loaded with spyware, adware, malware, etc.

posted by horseblind to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

What OS?
posted by bshort at 1:00 PM on September 15, 2005

Azureus is nice.
posted by Laen at 1:02 PM on September 15, 2005

Response by poster: Oh, sorry. Windows XP now and Linux in the near future.
posted by horseblind at 1:04 PM on September 15, 2005

Azureus will download some magnet links, but I am not sure what the limitations are. I am pretty sure it will just download decentralized bittorrent files. Azureus is (IMHO) the best bittorrent client availible.

Shareaza can as well, but I gave up on the non-bittorrent p2p stuff awhile ago.

P.S. Be sure to check out DimeADozen for bittorent bootlegs if you haven't already.
posted by phatboy at 1:05 PM on September 15, 2005

Response by poster: Shortly after Azureus was released I was using it for Bit Torrent transfers and found it to be very resource intensive so I bailed on it. Is this still so? The ability to be a BT client would surely be a bonnus (but not required as I already use ABC).
posted by horseblind at 1:09 PM on September 15, 2005

Azureus has improved but it is still pretty bad. It seems to use about 80-100 Mb of system memory in typical use. It isn't enough of a hog to really bother me though (this is on a 2.4 Ghz P4 with 640 Mb mem.

BTW, I found a list of MAGNET clients here.
posted by phatboy at 1:14 PM on September 15, 2005

I like Azureus better for BitTorrent, Shareaza better for everything else. Both are open-source and spyware- and adware-free (and both are fairly resource-intensive). As far as I know, though, Shareaza is Windows-only.
posted by box at 2:51 PM on September 15, 2005

Azureus is fantastic. I've tried a bunch but wound up sticking with it for over a year now. I can't seem to get my computer to pass it the magnet links, though. Anyone have a link for a how-to that addresses that?
posted by scarabic at 2:54 PM on September 15, 2005

I dunno about hooking up azureus with magnet, but shareaza will do it all pretty seemlessly... and give you access to multiple p2p networks as well. If you're doing all torrents, then azureus is clearly the nicer of the two programs... but if you need flexibility, then shareaza is a real treat to use.
posted by ph00dz at 6:02 PM on September 15, 2005

Hey, shouldn't this thread be closed by now?
posted by squirrel at 5:04 PM on April 3, 2006