Maniac help needed - Torrents !

[Daltons Chin Dimple]

It must be my advancing years, I am finally losing the race with technology ! I have never viewed anything online as a torrent in my entire life and now there is something online I really, really want to see that is available as a torrent and i have no idea whatsoever where to start!

Do I download a player? If so, which one ? Are there any sites to avoid? How does it all work ? HELP !!!!

[Jakester]

Here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.torrent#Downloading_torrents_and_sharing_files) is wikipedia's entry on torrents.

You can use any number of programs to download torrents. Azureus (http://azureus.sourceforge.net/) is a popular Bittorrent client.

If you download an mp3, it will play in any mp3 player you want. Videos can be a bit trickier. Most videos are encoded in the divx format and usually have an .avi extension. A fairly comprehensive codec pack can be found here (http://www.xpcodecpack.com/download).

Remember that downloading copyrighted material is a no-no (depending on where you live), and cannot be condoned or endorsed by mania or anyone who uses the site. That said, even though I'm sure you do not wish to download any copyrighted material, you still might not want prying eyes checking into what you are downloading. Peer Guardian (http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/) can help with that.

Also remember that as you download the file, you are also sharing it. Still, keep your client running for a while so that when you've completed your download, you can seed it for others who want it.