Wednesday, January 18, 2006

BitTorrent Ultra and addict3d.org

I don't know much about addict3d.org, but I'm tempted to recommend that you stay the hell away from it.

They seem to be reviewing absolutely any p2p-related software without even running it, dumping the summary from the author's website and posting a screenshot. They're covered by Google News which means that in my opinion, they're getting a lot more readers than they deserve.

Take for example the Google Alert that I received this morning regarding a new BitTorrent client, BitTorrent Ultra. The name immediately set off alarm bells for me since it implies that this client shits on everything else out there (like BitLord). Of course, this usually means that it's simply a rip of another client with adware installed (like BitLord).

Here's the "review" posted on addict3d.org of BitTorrent Ultra. The "internal rating" - I guess that means what the staff have rated it as - is 4.5/5. Ha.

If you want to download movies super fast and music too then you need to download BitTorrent Ultra.
Another warning that this is probably a shitty rip of another client.

So, I headed off to their website to check out their "ultra" client. Lo and behold, the software is a rip of Bram Cohen's original BitTorrent client (the "mainline" client), as evidenced by this screenshot. Bandwidth stolen from the developers:

A screenshot of the BitTorrent Ultra download screen.

I'm going to ignore the point that the developers are clearly incapable of taking a screenshot (that's the highest resolution version available) and point out that not only is this a ripoff of the mainline client, it's an old, old ripoff. BitTorrent hasn't looked like that since before v4.0.0 was released, IIRC, which was in early March 2005. At least BitLord is using a relatively recent version of BitComet's source.

In summary, BitTorrent Ultra is a "new kid on the block" in the world of BitTorrent, featuring all the features of BitTorrent from a year ago, plus a mirror of BitTorrent's documentation with "Ultra" appended to every instance of the word BitTorrent. It also features a new program icon and probably a shitload of malware! Download it now. Or don't, because it's the shittiest client I've seen so far.

(If anybody wants to install this crap to find out exactly how much malware is in it, be my guest, and leave a comment here.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Terrific write up splintax. The crap people try to get away with, no telling how much they paid google to be featured by them in their news. No doubt, the alterior motive is to have it chocked full of spyware as well... Thanks for the good article.

Anonymous said...

Agreed! Great review, and it's really hard to believe some of the shyte that goes on today! I just happened upon your site and am really impressed - clear, concise writing style, very informative!

Keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

Bittorrent Ultra is indeed Bittorrent Ultra crappy:

http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/p2p/

Bittorrent Ultra

Version Tested: 2.2
Date Tested: 7/31/06
Requires Personal Information: No
Autoupdater: Didn't see one
Autoupdates can be disabled: N/A
Ads In Program Interface: Sort of. Clicking on a bittorrent link opens the program and also opens an advertisement in MSIE
Installs DRM: No
Third Party Bundles: Yes
Third Party Bundles Optional or Required: Required
Third Party Disclosure: Yes
Disclosure Was Buried or Prominent: Not buried, but not particularly easy to see either.
List of Third Party Bundles:
Adblaster
Notes: This is just a crappy program. It is simply the original bare Bittorrent client with adware bundled into it.