Download managers

Posted on November 22, 2006, 1:36 pm by cipher27 under Software & Tools

Download managers are tools that allow you to download software, pause/ resume the download, switch off your computer after the download, download all files in a directory, Schedule a download, search for alternative sources(mirrors) and download multiple chunks of the  file simultaneously. Most browsers nowadays sport a built in download manager but most still don't support resuming of a stopped download, therefore download managers are a must  if you download a lot of software and are on dial up or have a spotty WiFi connection. Download managers allow you to resume a stopped download and let you save both time and money by starting the download from where it had stopped earlier. Download mangers can also accelerate downloads by downloading the files in multiple chunks simultaneously.

A few years ago before the advent of  broadband and the always connected world that we have today people used the  telephone line to dial up to an ISP and connect to the Internet. Speeds were limited to a maximum of 64-128 Kbps on ISDN and 33.6-56 Kbps on dial up, often you would get disconnected or would require a lot of time to download. A download begun in such a way would need to be continued once started or else you would need to download the file all over  again. There were sites that used FTP (File transfer protocol) that would allow you to connect to their site thru special software called FTP clients and download stuff, this method offered downloads that could be resumed but the process of connecting using FTP client, browsing to the appropriate directory and initiating a download was tedious hence people began to offer their downloads on the web using HTTP but these downloads couldn't be resumed so software written to address this issue began to appear on the net.

A brief overview of some of the most popular download manager is given below



Getright is one of the oldest download managers on the net it supports pause/resume of download, segmented downloads , scheduled downloads bandwidth throttling, searching multiple sources, supports multiple languages,supports both FTP and HTTP downloads. It  has a very easy to use interface and supports close integration with IE and Firefox and sports a inbuilt browser for browsing HTML links or redirect pages and  is priced at $29.95.



Flashget supports pause/resume of transfer , mirror search, manage files by category, a GUI that shows you the download percent in the form of blocks and allows up to 5 segments in the freeware version,has same sort of support for managing redirects closely integrates with various browsers and supports a lot of languages. Flash get is freeware and depends on contributions to stay alive.



TrueDownloader was formerly known as DownloadPlus earlier and was forced to change its name to the current one because of an Mal-ware of the same name. TrueDownloader supports pause/resume of download, supports multiple file downloads in segments ,Has internationalization support for various languages and supports both FTP and HTTP.

True Downloader and Flashget are both open source programs that provide excellent performance.A  more comprehensive comparison of all the download managers can be found here.


source:Wikipedia