Maybe you'll find it hard to believe but there are a great number of people - especially in my part of the world - who are still not familiar with the whole concept of using and downloading with torrents. This popular file-sharing method has been around for sometime but I still get a lot of questions such as: "What now? I downloaded the torrent but nothing is happening." I assume it's because of the fact that downloading files via torrent is not as straightforward as downloading files directly from the server or from the web.
You can help those poor souls who are still unfamiliar with torrent by using Torrent2Exe. A few readers mentioned it in the comments of my previous torrent article. Using this service, users can download files with the torrent protocol without the need to install a torrent client.
How it works
Basically, what Torrent2Exe does is combine the ".torrent" file and a small torrent client into one single stand-alone EXE package. Users then can execute this EXE file and immediately start the downloading process.
It also means that anybody can just create an EXE file of a torrent, copy it onto a thumb drive (or send it via email to friends) and download it on another computer. There's no need for a separate torrent client! Perfect for one-time torrent downloaders who don't want to install additional software.
How to make the EXE file
- Enter the link to the torrent or select a torrent from your hard disk
- Choose whether you want a small or normal size EXE file, the difference is stated below
- Click "Start Download" to get the EXE
- Share the EXE or the link to download the EXE to with your torrent-illiterate friends
- Run the EXE to download the files
Please note that the "Small EXE" file is smaller but require extra components to be downloaded the first time it runs. "Normal EXE" file on the other hand, is bigger in size because it already has all the components needed built-in. Since the difference in size is not too significant compared to the size of commonly-shared files these days, I personally would choose the "Normal" one. But maybe those who would like to attach the EXE in email will prefer the "Small" one.
To draw you a picture, in my experiment on downloading Fedora (691MB), the small EXE is 96.3KB and the normal exe is 592KB - insignificant compared to the downloaded file.
Extra Functionalities and Limitations
Torrent2Exe goes one step further by providing users with extra functionality to share torrents, such as:
- Users can publish the EXE file on their sites or blog by just providing the visitors link to the EXE file. This link will appear after user adds the torrent files to the Torrent2Exe site.
- Users can also insert direct links to the downloads together with links to the torrent files. A special script is provided to help automate the process.
Still, there are some limitations.
- First, the fact that the stand-alone has the "EXE" extension on it said that it can only be run in Windows computers.
- Second, even though you don't need a torrent client to download the torrent-shared files, you still need a torrent-friendly connection. So if your admin block the lines, there's nothing you can do (except try to bribe the person).
- Third, if you plan to share the EXE files via email, it's recommended that you archive the EXE files into ZIP or RAR (or other compression formats) before doing the emailing. Some email services (such as GMail) don't allow the distribution of EXE files. Plus, compressing the files will give you smaller size.
Have you used Torrent2Exe or do you know other alternatives? Share your thoughts in comment below.