Only noobs BitTorrent from their main Windows or Mac computer! Torrenting uses a lot of system resources and can significantly slow down your computer if you have a few torrents open. Additionally, you don't want to upload lots of data while you play games, or while other people in the house are using the Internet -- and really, leaving your computer on over night to download torrents is rather uneconomical.
The best solution, short of getting a VPS and doing your torrenting remotely, is to install a headless Linux or BSD box and control all of your torrents via the text-only console. Now, this isn't a guide on how to set up your own Linux box (there are hundreds of them online, just search) -- but basically any old, unused computer will do. Ideally you want it to be headless (i.e. without a monitor), so that you can put it under the stairs and so that it draws as little power as possible. If you can't choose a distro, Ubuntu Desktop is just fine.
Once you have a Linux box, log in via SSH and install rTorrent, which is by far the best console-based BitTorrent client -- and there are packages for every popular distro. Next, transfer some torrent files onto the Linux box: you can transfer them from your PC using FTP or SFTP (with Filezilla), or download them directly, via the console, with wget.
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