I think it’s pretty safe to assume everybody has heard of BitTorrent, but if you haven’t, where have you been living? Although it’s much more infamous for distributing illegal content than anything else, it does have a number of quite legitimate uses. There are a quite a few large files such as Linux ISO’s that have been available on torrent as well as several games companies actually seeing the benefits and also using torrents for perfectly acceptable purposes of distributing their game patches and updates. Although I very rarely use torrents these days unless the file or patch is only available that way, it is still incredibly popular throughout the computing world.
Dropbox is also a highly popular form of cloud storage which you will most likely have heard of as well. It is a highly useful service and although the default amount of storage on offer is smaller than some other services such as Google Drive or Skydrive, there’s still enough there for the average user to store and sync a number of files across multiple devices. And it’s complete ease of use just adds to Dropbox’s attraction.
That is why this latest online service caught my eye after reading about it on TorrentFreak, because I can’t see any point of having a torrent client on hand as I use it so infrequently. But when the need does arise, there is a way to download torrents without using any software which sounds rather intriguing. The service is called Boxopus and it basically connects directly with your Dropbox account and then downloads the files from the torrent straight to it, no need for a torrent client on your PC. This obviously has other benefits such as the download can be synced to whichever computers are connected to the account, it will also be anonymous as you’re not the one downloading the torrent, Boxopus is, and also you can queue up more than one download while out or at work etc, and then have them ready to download or sync from Dropbox when you get home!
Boxopus is currently available in an open beta state and is completely free and although it will become subscription based sometime in the future, there will still be free accounts with limited features. This will most likely be speed and/or the amount of traffic you’re allowed. The service is also being rolled out onto a number of torrent sites with the idea of making this a one click download.
To use the service, head on over to Boxopus and register for a new account. Once you have entered an email address and password, Boxopus will ask to connect with your Dropbox account. It will create a folder in your Dropbox called ‘\Apps\Boxopus’ and only has access to that folder because it uses the Dropbox API.
Once that’s done, you will be in the Boxopus ‘My Downloads’ window and to get started, simply click the button to browse for a torrent file you have already downloaded to your computer. Then click the button to put it in your Dropbox. After confirmation, it will be added to your download list and awaiting the download to begin. At this time, there appears to be no limit on the number of torrents you can add into the list. Then let the downloads complete and go check the Boxopus folder in you Dropbox.
There is an obvious drawback in that the size and amount of downloads are restricted by the amount of space in your Dropbox, so if it’s already 90% full, there’s not much room for torrents. Currently each friend you refer to Dropbox adds another 500MB to your account and a total of 16GB can be earned in total, bring the overall total to a possible 18GB.
It’s worth bearing in mind that Boxopus is experiencing a bit of trouble coping with the huge spike in new subscriptions over the last day or so and my test torrent is taking a while to start up. For occasional torrent users, this service could prove very useful as you can just set it off and come back later or even another day, but major downloader’s might be better waiting to see how it takes off and whether it has any early teething troubles or ‘issues’ with either Dropbox or the various authorities…
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