BitTorrent is a fast and free peer-to-peer file sharing application that makes it easy to locate and download torrents from around the web.

The program includes its own search box. Enter a few keywords describing whatever you're looking for, and a browser windows will open at Ask.com with whatever matching torrents the site could uncover. Follow the links, and as long as you made BitTorrent your default torrent application during installation, the program should open and begin downloading your selected file.

BitTorrent isn't your default app? Click Options > Preferences and you can set up your file associations manually. And while you're there, knowledgeable users may want to take advantage of BitTorrent's many customisation options. You're able to tweak the port used for incoming connections; limit upload and download rates to ensure there's bandwidth left for other apps; cap torrent transfers to a particular amount in the past month; use a scheduler to enable BitTorrent to run at full speed only during the times you define, and more.

BitTorrent 7 takes all this further, from support for both global and per-torrent speed limiting, to adding entirely new features like an RSS Downloader. Yet it still remains fast and extremely lightweight, with the core program consuming barely more than 7MB RAM (private working set) when it's first launched - this isn't a tool that's going to slow you down.

BitTorrent 7 also gets a dramatic rewrite to its disk i/o, which means noticeable performance gains in multi-tasking. For example, you can delete files from a torrent or move torrents to a new location, but without the usual slow-down in torrent downloading. Or, download torrents to two different drives, but with the speed of downloading to a single drive. You'll notice gains at both low and high speeds, and whether you're writing to local disk, a RAID or a network drive. You'll also experience improvements to the disk subsystem and rate limiter.