Torrent tamer

Bit torrent technology has revolutionized file sharing and downloading, making it possible for individuals to share and swap huge files quickly and with little hassle. The biggest problem may be just finding the files you want among all the torrents on all the various bit torrent sites. Torrent Junction from JustVB can help. It's a free search utility in Visual Basic that quickly scours available bit torrent sites individually or collectively and displays its results within the program's interface. You can view pages in the torrent search engine or download them directly from the application since it also acts as client. With Torrent Junction there's no need to juggle multiple programs.

Torrent Junction's main interface is a simple but attractive dialog: just a search field with a tabular view for search results and buttons controlling the few available program settings, an update function, and a Help file in .pdf format. There are boxes to select each currently available torrent site individually or to search them all at once. Using Torrent Junction couldn't be simpler: choose your sites and enter your search, and the program returns detailed results in seconds. A search for an obscure black-and-white comedy turned up not only the film but also MP3 excerpts. We like the ability to choose only certain sites to search yet still being able to search the selected sites all at once.

Torrent Junction is freeware. The latest version, 0.8b, includes major updates. It works fine in Vista but shows some clunkiness in Windows 7, and it leaves files behind when uninstalled.