Not only is this a wonderful BitTorrent client, but it's a shining poster boy for Java and open source developers everywhere. The vanilla installation packs in more features than most other clients out there, like support for anonymous protocols like I2P and Tor, as well as built in support for UPnP port mapping and IRC chat. But to truly get the most out of Azureus, you need to dive into the plugins directory.

An installation wizard gives you access to an online repository of plugins, which can be installed via a BitTorrent download. The Speed Scheduler, for example, will let you throttle your download and upload speeds at designated times - handy if your ISP has an off-peak time. Or, you can install a web interface which lets you check up on your torrents, or add new torrents, from another PC anywhere on the Internet.

But there's major drawback to running Azureus, and that comes down to the amount of resources it requires to run. It consistently clocked over 70MB on a single file, which is a far cry from uTorrent's comparatively tiny 8MB on the same file, and you can see that there's a Azureus comes at a price, particularly for low end systems.

Despite this, we thoroughly recommend it for power BitTorrent users, and for those in a multiplatform environment, you can't go wrong - it also runs happily on Linux and Mac OS X.