In the computing world, an “appliance” is a computer that is “dedicated to a single task, and has limited configuration ability”. If you have a router in your home, you have an appliance. If you work for a medium to large-size company, they might have an “anti-spam appliance”: a computer that sits between the Internet and your email server, removing spam. Although appliances are usually dedicated to a single task, what really makes a “computer” an “appliance” is the limited interface. Although your home router is basically a small computer, you cannot click a couple of things and turn it into a file server, or play Solitaire on it.
With the rise of software virtualization, people have started referring to some virtual machines as “appliances”. Although this isn’t, strictly speaking, accurate – most virtual machines run a traditional desktop operating system instead of one dedicated to the task at hand – they can be appliances in the “dedicated to a single task” meaning. In this article, I’ll show you how to create a “Bittorrent appliance”.
But first… why have a “Bittorrent appliance” in the first place? Well, there are several reasons why you might want to run Bittorrent as an appliance:
Compatibility: Many Bittorrent applications don’t work at all in Windows Vista, and many don’t work nearly as well in Vista as they did in XP. By creating an XP-based virtual machine, you can use Vista and still enjoy all of the BT programs that work better in Windows XP. Also, if you have a computer that dual-boots between XP and Vista, you can use the appliance in either OS with minimal disruption. If you’re in XP but need to reboot into Vista and have several downloads going, simply shut down the appliance, reboot into Vista, then restart the appliance! You’ll be back where you left off in seconds!
Portability: The appliance can be installed on (or easily moved to) a portable USB hard drive. So if you have a friend with a crazy fast Internet connection, you can shut down the appliance on your computer, remove the USB drive from your system, drive to your friend’s house, connect the USB drive to his computer, and restart your downloads immediately. Or let’s say you have a desktop computer in your college dorm room, and want to take your downloads home with you to Mom & Dad’s house. Just shut down the appliance, remove the USB drive and hook it up to the desktop PC at your folk’s house – and you’re instantly back where you were at school!
Security: I know that someone’s going to jump on me for this, but I don’t care! Let’s pretend that you’re a heavy downloader. One day you get a letter in the mail from a law firm that states that you’re being sued by the music industry. By having all of your downloading apps on a virtual machine, you’ll necessarily have no downloading apps on your physical machine. If your hard drive were to be seized in a lawsuit, forensics investigators wouldn’t find any evidence of downloading on your computer… because there aren’t any “illicit” programs on your computer!
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