I installed it recently and even though I tried being careful not to install anything unnecessary, it tricked me into it! There was a checkbox saying something like "accept terms and conditions and install Bing toolbar", and I only readbthe beginning and left it checked as Eulas have conditioned me (of course I had accepted terms and conditions of utorrent before that).

Optional adware I can deal with in an otherwise open source application, but I've never understood why anyone would use a closed source bittorrent client if they ever plan on committing copyright infringement.

still using the last-open source version with the auto-updater disabled!

May I suggest Deluge (http://deluge-torrent.org/)?

It's open-source, cross-platform and very similar to µTorrent in both functionality and looks.

Transmission ( http://www.transmissionbt.com/ ) is an open source torrent client with a nice web interface (as well as native interface) just like Deluge.

I think it is somewhat lighter resource-wise (I'm running it on my NAS), but apart from that I don't know the exact differences between Deluge and Transmission, but I thought I'd mention it for completeness' sake.

I love Transmission on OS X and wish they had a real Windows port!

Their website demonstrates a Qt GUI, as well as a web interface. What would, in your opinion, constitute a "real" Windows port?

Something better than those options? What about a web interface or a Qt GUI screams "great Windows UI" to you?

I suppose I did not place the same emphasis on "great" as you did. Alternatively, I couldn't name a "great" Windows UI offhand, anyway.

However, my experience is that some Qt apps on Windows behave normally, and depending on the application (but in this case, especially just the need to manage torrents) a web UI works just fine and avoids the waste of developer hours fighting against the local platform's quirks.

For my enlightenment, what do you consider as an example of a great Windows UI?

Just watch out for the latest (1.3.3) Windows release - it (or one of the bundled dependencies) seems very broken and I had to revert to the previous version to make things work again.

Can I choose which files to download before it puts empties on the file system?

Yes. It might create some folder structure, but if you choose at the time of adding the torrent to not download particular files, it won't create files. Tested just now on 1.3.1/Linux. I haven't tested recently, but I know I've gone in after adding the torrent, told it not to download some files, deleted what it had on the fs, and it did not regenerate them.

Interesting, I've been using deluge for many years, had no idea they had a build that runs on windows.

Deluge has all the features I want on a torrent client, I will replace my uTorrent installations on windows by deluge.

I'm pretty sure uTorrent was never open source. The mainline client was, though.

The current "mainline" one is simply the same as utorrent, with a different name.

my mistake it wasn't oss, it was the last version before BitTorrent began bundling it into installers.