does anybody use N8x0 with external HDD as a regular torrent machine? e.g., just in order to save on electricity bills by running 24/7 silent and low-consuming tablet instead of power-eating PC?

any experience here? any tricks? suggestions?

There are some ports of BitTorrent applications. Search around on the forums (Transmission, Rtorrent). There are also external HDD solutions available for NIT. There are also low W embedded NAS which run BitTorrent. You can also buy or build a low-power PC. In general, BitTorrent costs some CPU power because it uses hashes to check segments of the file(s).

I use a Linutop2 for that.

the point is that i just do not use my N800. so, why search and buy linutop or any other lowend pc if i've already got one .

and, yes, i surely know, that there's a Transmission port and solutions to connect the tablet to an external HDD exist as well. it's not what i'm asking about -- i ask if someone were already using it? i'm looking for some real experience just in order to understand if it's worth to start with .

I would occasionally set it up (on the charger) torrenting overnight, being careful to restart it every evening to keep seeding... that was just to grab some stuff onto the SD, so no external HDD, and not as a regular thing; it seems like it would work, though.

Yes, people are using it. Look around on the forums.

1. Torrenting draws the battery fairly quick, you need to leave it plugged in.
2. Speed is lower (At least for me). As a comparison a Slackware 12 dvd image usually has enough seeds in my fiber area (same country, same operator on fiber we have full 10 Mbit between us) yanks 3 - 4 Mb on the pc but tops out at 150-200 Kb on the tablet (I saw more but just spikes).

icebox, thanks.

btw, which torrent-client do you use on the pc and on the tablet? Transmission sometimes has real speed problems

That's my usage of n770 as I said before. I use arm compiled aria2c application - very light and not so resources extensive as ctorrent.
Although I'm not using external hdd - i use internal card with ext2 filesystem (I've had problems with fat).
I've set up usb-host permanently so I can connect any pendrive from powered-hub.
I tried to power tablet itself by hub's supply but spikes caused by the charging process caused drops in hub's and connected stick voltage that were too much for them.
Disadvantage is to have combined power supply - one for charging, second for powering usb devices.
My electricity bills dropped drastically when I shut down my PIII working as home server and replace it with linksys wireless router in combination with n770 working as torrent downloader.

XTC, thanks, that's really informative.