Don't worry about it,
Forbin. There are plenty of people here who know information technology who have no problems helping others. I'm just happy that people want to get involved! I mean, you could just say "forget it!" and get out of it altogether, which would mean fewer customers, less customer service, fewer sales, fewer repairs, fewer servers needed, and it would get to the point where people like me, who build, repair and handle IT issues all day would no longer have a job. Yes, a majority of my business deals with large corporations, but home consumers are vital to the industry, and we as IT professionals, regardless of what service level, supply the demand.
Now, as to torrent downloading. Yes, they're new, and it's great technology,
when it works. Torrents are not stable, and they're not reliable. What they are, are
redundant. Where one source is lost another takes its place, but only if there's another available source. I've had torrents with 30 sources (or "seeders") fail to download. Look at it like this: You want to build yourself a car, and in this case, you have two options:
Option 1: Contact the Manufacturer, who will send you the car. The shipment's arrival date depends on how heavy traffic is on the interstate, how far away the manufacturing plant is to your shop, and how many other people are ordering the same car. Plus, it costs more to have it sent this way. Also, if the manufacturer no longer carries the model you want, you have to search elsewhere and hope someone else has it.
Option 2: You download the order form from the manufacturer who says "Here is a list of suppliers where you can get our parts". So you use the list to contact all of the suppliers. Some of them say they can send your parts, others can't. Eventually you are able to find enough suppliers to send all of the parts you need. Some parts arrive immediately within that day. Others arrive a few days later, and some don't arrive for weeks. However, you cannot complete your car until all of the parts are here, so you keep contacting other suppliers until all the parts are there. Then you can build your car. This can be a short amount of time, or a long amount of time. You are solely dependent upon the sources on that list to follow through. Now remember, many of these sources are private sources, so there are times when a bad part arrives at your doorstep and you have to wait for another one. This can be time consuming.
"Option 1" would be downloading FTP (file transfer protocol) & HTTP (hyper text transfer protocol). That's the standard "right click and save" option.
"Option 2" is torrent downloading. It's very unpredictable, and very unreliable, however, it is redundant in that many people have many pieces of the file in question.
Both work, the second one works by virtue of thousands of sources. That doesn't make it better. It just makes it more likely to get a hard to find file. Even so, bad torrents where no one updates or refreshes the location can end up with you not having your file after hours of torrenting. Believe me, I have had a file that downloaded 98%, only to stop because there are no other sources. It has happened. So no, torrenting is not better, it's just another option.
Speaking of, I tried to access the torrent last night on NV's website and the page wouldn't load. That just shows no download is superior when the page can't give you the information you need (no slight against NV, I know the server's probably overloaded and with good reason).
So don't worry about it. There's nothing "smart" about torrent downloading. It's just another option. You use what's best for you. Same goes for you,
Mike!
J.
