A while ago, like a few years ago or so, I used to use ed2k to get most files. I used that instead of torrents because torrents seem to hog the computer/bandwidth much more than ed2k did, and generally was only about the same speed as ed2k. Nowadays though, if you are diligent enough, you can almost always find what you're looking for via direct download and/or file hosting sites. I don't torrent/ed2k anything anymore. Don't have to, file hosts and direct
downloads are SO much faster, even if you do have to deal with a bazillion parts to a file, I feel it's the better way to go in the long run.