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+BitTorrent has been around for 6 years now and its no longer just for nerds, but for newcomers used to Kaaza or Limewire, the hottest file sharing ticket on the internet can be a little bewildering.
+
+Background
+
+Bittorrent is not a program. In fact it's just a protocol that enables you to download files via a distributed peer-to-peer network. Rather than grabbing a single file from a single user, as is the case with Limewire and other programs, with bittorrent you grab little pieces of the file from a multitude of users.
+
+While it's not any more complex that Limewire, Bittorrent is a bit different -- and loads faster.
+
+What You'll Need
+
+The download process involves two separate parts. First you need a Bittorrent client to handle the actual downloads. We recommend <a href="http://www.uTorrent.com/">µTorrent</a> (Windows) or <a href="http://transmission.m0k.org/">Transmission</a> (Mac), but there are many others out there.
+
+The second part of the download process involves finding the bittorrent files themselves. These files (which end in the extension .torrent) connect your client to others who have the content you want to download.
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+Some of the more popular torrent trackers with search engines include <a href="http://www.mininova.org/">Mininova</a>, <a href="http://thepiratebay.org/">The Pirate Bay</a>, <a href="http://isohunt.com/">isoHunt</a> and <a href="http://torrentspy.com/">TorrentSpy</a>. All of these are public trackers. More exclusive, private sites also exist, but you'll need to register to use them.
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+Once you download a .torrent file from the tracker, open it up in your client and you should start to connect to "peers." 
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+The torrent file you just opened does not contain the actual files you want. Instead, it has all the information client needs to find peers who are also sharing and/or downloading the file.
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+Advanced Topics
+
+The above information should help you get started, but once you're comfortable with the process you may want to look into some ways you can optimize your bittorrent experience.
+
+Most good torrent clients feature a way to selectively download only some files from a torrent (both clients listed above have this feature). This comes in handy when you're downloading, say a large mix of music, but you only want one song. Both µTorrent and Transmission offer an "inspect torrent" panel that will let you pick and choose which files to download and even prioritize the order in which they download.
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+Once you're cranking down the torrents like an old pro, you'll notice that BitTorrent downloads and uploads suck up a lot of bandwidth. 
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+But any decent client will let you control how much bandwidth a torrent is allowed to use. In both Transmission and µTorrent you can access these options in the Preferences panes. Both programs also offer schedulers which can throttle your bandwidth during the day and open it up at night when you aren't using your machine.
+
+
+A word on etiquette.
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+Since other users are giving you the files via their own bandwidth, it's considered good form to make sure you "seed" torrents even after you're done downloading them.
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+Most clients include ratio, which tells you how much you've downloaded versus uploaded. The magic number is 1/1. In fact, many sites, especially the private ones we mentioned earlier, will ban you if you don't keep your ratio above a certain point.
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+So how to make sure you're contributing back to the community? Rather than obsessively checking your torrent ratios, use the "Queuing" features in your client. For µTorrent you'll find this under "Seed While" section. Transmission offer the same controls under the Preferences pane. 
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+Using a queue you can set your client to seed torrents until you reach a certain ratio and then stop to conserve bandwidth.
+
+Privacy
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+While bittorrent downloads are more difficult to track than single source downloads like Limewire, torrents aren't automatically protected. Snoops from the RIAA and elsewhere can and do watch torrent traffic. 
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+To avoid snoops there's a Windows-only privacy program named <a href="http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/">PeerGuardian2</a> which tracks a list of blacklisted IP addresses and prevents them from connecting to your computer. Unfortunately nothing similar exists on the Mac.
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+Many torrent clients now support encryption, µTorrent does, which makes it difficult for snoops to see what you're downloading, even though they'll still know you're downloading something. At the moment Transmission doesn't support encryption, though rumor has it it will be included in the next release.
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