Windows only

uTorrent is definitely one of my favorite BitTorrent clients on Windows, and after 9-months of development version 1.8 has finally been released. This new release includes full Vista support (including the Windows Firewall, Teredo/IPҢ, and numerous other enhancements.

Back in December 2006 you may recall our concern as to where uTorrent was going to head since it had been acquired by BitTorrent. A lot of dedicated followers said that they would be switching clients, but here we are a few versions later and overall it still feels like the uTorrent we know and love. The new version uses just 9MB of memory when downloading a torrent on my machine which is even lighter than the previous version, and the interface is still easy to understand. What about you? After a year and a half are you still using uTorrent, or have you switched to something else because of the acquisition?

What does the future hold for uTorrent? The developers aren't quite ready to move on to the next release of uTorrent as they will be focusing on a Mac version of the client. The first public Alpha release of uTorrent for the Mac is expected to be released in the coming weeks, and we'll be sure to let you know once that becomes available.

Get uTorrent 1.8

Over in our forum Max inquired about whether it was safe to remove old versions of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) that had been left behind after each upgrade. Of course you can, and there's a good chance that you can free up hundreds of megabytes by removing them.

According to Sun the reason they leave the old versions of Java on your computer is to ensure that older Java applications will work even if they're not compatible with the newest version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE):

The latest version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is always the recommended version as it contains updates and improvements to previous versions. The latest available version is always compatible with the older versions.

You can keep older versions of the JRE installed, in case you have an applet/application that still depends upon a previous version.

The chances of you actually needing one of these older versions probably isn't high, and removing them can definitely free up some space on your hard drive. Sun provides instructions on how to uninstall older versions of Java, but it can be a bit tedious if you've got several updates to remove.

The easier method is to use a free program called JavaRa, which JMBAKE pointed out. It only works on Windows, but the nice thing is that it doesn't require any installation. Just download the file, extract the contents, and you're ready to go.

When you launch JavaRa you should see a simple interface just like this one:

It's all pretty self explanatory, but here's a list of the things that you can do:

• Remove old versions of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE)
• Update to the latest version of JRE
• Remove the Java startup entry
• Remove the Sun download manager
• Remove useless JRE files

Nothing like having a little extra breathing room on your PC.

Download JavaRa

flump is a tiny Adobe AIR app. for downloading photos from Flickr.

You supply a Flickr ID (it could be your own or someone else's) and the tool will download all the public photos from that Flickr account to your hard drive.

flump downloads the original images but only if the Flickr account owner has set their account permissions to allow the original images to be downloaded.

The app was originally developed by Mike Chambers and Lee Brimelow of Adobe and the full source is now available on Google code.