Introduction

Downloading and uploading is an everyday part of my life. At work I download a lot of software and applications. Since there is high speed Internet at my workplace I don’t bother using a download manager. But in my apartment I have a 256kbps connection. Suddenly the video freezes and I will be sitting in front of a motionless movie player. Sometimes a video takes a long time buffering, enough to go and get another bowl of popcorn! Nowadays, even HD movies are available over the net and it’s that which ultimately led me to download movies using a download manager. My hunt for the best free download manager started. So far I have explored four download mangers and in this article I have compared them by downloading a 49.41MB file with a 1 Mbps ASDL connection.

As with most download methods, the speed increase can vary dramatically, depending on the servers involved, the time of day, the speed of the local connection and other factors.

Download Accelerator Plus

Download Accelerator Plus (DAP) has a free version and is also available in a premium version for US$ 39.95. The premium version of course has more features. The free version displays ads, whereas in the premium version, the ads are removed (although nonfunctional adware remnants remain). DAP supports all popular browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and others. The tool also supports Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish. DAP can make your downloads faster, thanks its patented technologies such as a facility for multiple connections to responsive servers. When you are downloading a file, the download speed is displayed in a digital format. The main window of DAP is divided into three main sections that are represented as tabs.

 The first ‘Download’ tab manages your download and displays the history of downloaded files, queued, paused, scheduled, cancelled, broken and completed files. Plus, everyday the download manager will suggest popular downloads.

DAP can recover and resume aborted downloads that have been interrupted by a broken connection. Most download managers have this feature but they can resume aborted downloads only if the server supports resuming. In DAP, the resume command routes downloads from a non-resuming server through SpeedBit’s own servers. So you can resume the download as soon as SpeedBit has received the file.

The second tab of DAP is ‘Internet’. This is basically a browser through which you can quickly look for the files you want. The search page directly links to websites that can help you to download directly using DAP. If a site has multiple file formats you can select a particular type of file format using the available filters. 

The third and final tab is the FTP tab that ensures you receive files from the exact file path and the server you are seeking them from. Since DAP has an integrated browser all you need to do is to enter the URL of the ftp. The download manager locates the path and displays the ftp protocols so then all you need to do is just click on the file to download it.