Vuze 5.0.0.0

Vuze, formerly known as Azureus, is a powerful BitTorrent client that makes it very easy to locate, share and download files.

The program features an intuitive interface that means you'll feel at home right away. Enter a keyword or two in the Search box, press [Enter], and Vuze will trawl the very best torrent sites for matches, quickly displaying anything it finds. Click the Download button for anything of interest, and it'll be downloaded in the background, while you browse more files or carry out further searches.

It's all very simple, then, but if even this feels too much like hard work then you can always use the Subscriptions feature, which will provide you with your favourite content automatically, no need to do anything at all.

Vuze isn't just about locating content, though - it can help you play it back, too. An integrated high definition player will display any videos you might have downloaded, for instance. And new support for additional devices means you can drag and drop your content onto the iPod, iPad, Android phones, Xbox, PSP, PS3 and more.

And best of all, Vuze is smart, automatically optimising your settings to ensure you're always downloading files at the fastest possible speeds. Generally this works very well, too, although if you have your own optimisation ideas, then there are also plenty of manual options and settings to provide the low-level control that you need.

Vuze is relatively demanding on system resources, using a lot more RAM than lightweight competitors like uTorrent. But otherwise it's an impressive tool, fast, intuitive and with plenty of useful features.