Have a look at my answers to your questions in RED below...


(1) Are dedicated IPs required for a lot of private trackers? Is that something I should look for? By dedicated IP, do you mean one that never changes at all, ever? further clarification needed. Seedboxes are created to comply with private trackers. Therfore your IP will not be changing.

(2) is VPN capability fairly common? I would like to use it from time to time for public trackers...(yes, I know it's overkill but I already paid for an annual subscription of PIA and I might as well use it). From what i've seen with seedboxes (I'm by no means a seedbox guru), if you have a halfway decent slot, it should have VPN capability. For example, I pay 13.95eu a month for mine and it has VPN function.

(3) I see two types of bandwidth plans: metered and unmetered. Obviously, unmetered would be preferred but I'd like to start small at first and not spend more than $20/mo. How much bandwidth should I look for at a minimum? 1TB? [COLOR="#FF0000"] This all depends on how much traffic you think you will use. In most cases you probably do not need an unmetered slot. Again, this is only my opinion.

(4) are most of the seedboxes running linux? I'm concerned a bit about the complexity since I'm predominately a windows user. This. I would not worry about, most seedboxes have UI (user interfaces) that very closely resemble familiar torrent download software, such as utorrent in layout. Most seedboxes don't require knowledge of Linux... Myself, I can barely spell linux, let alone code with it.

Like I mentioned before, If I was you, I would do some independant googleing and try to figure out what you want in a seedbox, as there are many many many out there. Are you simply wanting a better/easier means to seed your torrents? Do you want large HDD space to store your files. IMO most users do not need an unmetered plan.

Good luck!