A .torrent file is used in peer-to-peer technology, specifically in a BitTorrent client program. A .torrent file is used to download other files. With BitTorrent you can download music, movies, applications etc etc
Where do I start?
You need two basic things to get going, a bittorrent client and a website to grab .torrent files. There are many bittorrent clients out there but I am going to recommend to you 2, first is plain old simple Bittorrent...it does just what it needs to, small program, not intimidating etc. Second up is Azureus, this is the program I use, it is more advanced than Bittorrent so may look a little scary to begin with. Pick your clinet of choice, download and install it!
Now you need .torrent files to open in these programs, the .torrent files are what connect you to other people and allow you to download. There are many specialised sites out there but for general useage these two sites are pretty much all you are going to need:
Next?
Now you have your BitTorrent client and a site to get .torrent files from you can start downloading! Navigate to the .torrent file you want and save it to your computer, then double click on the file and it will open in your chosen client. Once the download is 100% complete, navigate to the place you saved it and open it up. Now, the things you can download via BitTorrent are varied, how you use the files therefore also varies greatly and I am not going to go into detail about every method as that would take me a lifetime. A lot of torrent downloads come packed as .rar files, therefore you'll need to download and install Winrar to open them, 99% of these .rar archives will contain a readme file....read it. If you have downloaded music chances are you can just extract the mp3s and they will be good to go. If you donwloaded some software find the install file and run it. If you downloaded a movie or TV show you'll most likely find that the file will not play, this is because you need 'Codecs' to play them, if you have the most recent version of Windows Media Player there is a good chance it will automatically download the codec for you. If it doesn't then you should download and install K lite mega codec pack.
That's it, you should now be hot to trot.
* You should never download copyrighted material as that is illegal. This tutorial is intended to teach you how to use legal torrents only.
* As with most things there are certain unwritten rules regarding torrenting. Do not 'Hit and Run', this means grabbing the file for yourself without seeding (uploading) it. You should always seed a torrent to at least 100%, it is best to simply leave it running after you have finished leeching (downloading) it, but if you do need to stop it that is fine, once you are ready to seed again just double click the .torrent file to set it going.
