Getting started with torrents
A Torrent
In short, a torrent is like Willie Wonka's giant-candy-bar-to-TV machine. It's a file (movie, music, application, photos, etc) that is broken up into pieces by everyone who is uploading the file. You download the file in pieces and when it's finished it's put back into the number of files it originally was.
Downloading Torrents
To download torrents, you need a torrent program and a website to search for them. To me, the best torrent program is
uTorrent. It's fast, lightweight, and easy to use. There are plenty of torrent sites out there to search.
Demonoid (need subscription),
TorrentSpy,
PirateBay, and many more.
Once you have downloaded and installed your program then feel free to change some settings. Torrents were made to get better speeds the more you uploaded, but that seems to be a thing of the past. It's just nice to at least upload your file 100%.
Just go to your favorite torrent site, search for the file, and it will ask you to download a small file. I usually just selected Open With and use uTorrent. Once that is done, your torrent program should pop up a small window allowing you to select which files you want to download in the torrent and where to download them to. Just hit OK and you are downloading. When you feel like you're finished, remove the file and you're done.