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Weekend open forum: Download accelerators and managers, are they still relevant?
in-house feature
As most of you are likely aware of, we keep an up to date downloads section here at TechSpot. While we mostly focus on the more prominent software tools and utilities we foresee our readers will appreciate having listed here, that inevitably puts us in the position of constantly monitoring for new software and trends in this industry.
After exchanging some emails with the developers of Download Accelerator Plus earlier this week, I began to wonder, how relevant are download managers today anyway? Personally, I stopped using one a few years ago when most of my web downloads could be handled just as well from Firefox and a fast enough broadband connection that wouldn't break up even larger files. Then, for most of my gigabyte-plus downloads I always rely on a BitTorrent client (uTorrent is my favorite), which you may still call a specialized download manager.
Still this behavior is quite different from that of the late nineties when using a download manager like DAP, Getright, or any other of the myriad available at the time was a must. Today you can even get tiny download manager plug-ins for Firefox, and freeware full applications are also aplenty.
So my question is, do you believe download managers are still relevant? Do you use them? And if so, which one is your favorite?
Discuss.
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User Comments (17)
Post a comment| Cueto_99 on October 10, 2008 8:12 PM | Personally, I don't use download managers anymore... in the early 90's it was a must, 'cause at anytime the internet connection could fail just when you reached that 95% of a 4mb file (that was quite annoying) and our 'wonderful' browser that reign the world (aka Internet Explorer 5 or 6) didn't even had the feature to restart where your finished... so in my case, getright was a must... but now, i really don't believe in that theory that these managers speed-up the download time for a file... and, yes... the only download manager I do use is Bitlord for Torrents...
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| tw0rld on October 10, 2008 8:19 PM | I no longer use a download manager.
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| yukka on October 10, 2008 8:20 PM | I will use one the next time I am on a dial up connection - around the same time as hell freezes over and monkeys eject themselves en' masse from my butt..
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| TimeParadoX on October 10, 2008 9:13 PM | Although download managers ( like DownThemAll! for FireFox ) can be very helpful because they download every image on a specific page without having to go through them all, download accelerators aren't as necessary any more, I download on average from 800KB/s to 1.2MB/s, I downloaded the Crysis Demo ( around 2-3gigs I believe ) within 20 minutes as opposed to a few years ago with 56K which would have taken a day or two.
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| Poertner_1274 on October 10, 2008 9:20 PM | I have not used a download accelerators (I used to use DAP) in quite a long time. As Julio stated, ever since websites can handle high transfer speeds with 1 connection, instead of multiple connections at slower rates, I have not used DAP.
You definitely get spoiled when you are at a good site with high transfer speeds (like TS), and it is very frusterating when you need to download something from a site that has slow transfer rates.
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| redk on October 10, 2008 11:31 PM | A day or two for 2 GB?
The crysis demo was 1.7 GB when I dled it, and at 5 kb/s which is generous for dial up that would take just over four days, and that's if you let it be and didn't use the computer. Download accelerators never worked for me, and often I'd just go download stuff at other people's houses when we were still on dial up at mine.
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| nirkon on October 11, 2008 1:06 AM | Of course, I can tell you that for sure,
for example, resuming downloads is a feature that neither firefox nor IE have (firefox's resume doesn't really work). Plus, when I am on a wireless connection, I get a slow speed using firefox or ie, but when I turn on a download manager I can download on my full connection speed. What download managers do that the browsers don't is also add more connections, you can create 4,8+ connections to the download, maximising the download speed.
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| wolfram on October 11, 2008 1:39 AM | Well I don't use them often, but I find Flashget (and the Firefox Flashgot extension) very useful, especially when downloading Crysis Wars, which took me like 2 days to get (because I was playing online and paused the download lol)...
I love the pause feature, which happens to work flawlessly with Filefront. Maybe that would've worked on Firefox, but I'm kind of used to Flashget =)
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| Auldian on October 11, 2008 2:25 AM | The Opera built-in download manager has been there for years ... I've never needed another.
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| skitzo_zac on October 11, 2008 7:36 AM | I live in australia where internet speeds are very low and expensive compared to most other countries. I have only a 512Kb connection with 12GB of allowed bandwidth. So I use a manager occassionally (Free Download Manager). Generally I can't really download much or very fast. I mainly use my manager for unmetered files that of on my ISP's file mirror. Apart from that I use uTorrent for torrents.
If you could change the transfer rates for indiviual files or all transfers in Opera I wouldn't need a manager, except uTorrent. Opera does support torrents, but I prefer using uTorrent.
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| captain828 on October 11, 2008 7:38 AM | > Do you believe download managers are still relevant?
It depends what you download; if you download a pic, a pdf or a small app no, but if you download something big (>100MB) like a demo or an HD trailer for eg. then it's best to use a download manager that can split the files automatically so you'll have a constant speed and be able to *properly* resume (Firefox doesn't always work) About uTorrent... that's definitely the best way to go for files >4GB but you would need a tracker in order to upload them somewhere and free fast trackers don't quite exist. Though the analogy is valid, I actually wouldn't call a BitTorrent client a download manager, it's a tad bit more than just that as it searches for the best peers on a torrent and can handle many trackers at a time, looking for the best connections possible whereas a download manager uses a fixed server and just splits the files for better speeds. > Do you use them? I used to work with IDM which I have to say is probably the best download accelerator/manager out there; you can specify where files with a certain extension go to which is pretty neat for, lets say saving pdf's and doc's in a separate folder then the other downloads. Also, it really accelerates you download and it has terrific integration with any browser. But, since the FF2 days I chose the DownloadThemAll! plugin which is just great; it splits files, the resume works well and is easy to use. > Which one is your favorite? Even if for the past 3-4 years I have used Firefox + downloadThemAll!, IDM is the best and fastest one out there, but it's not free and it can be cumbersome for normal users.
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| Lou3 on October 11, 2008 8:51 AM | I recently found a backup CD with a bunch of utilities I used in 1999~2001 that were golden back then: CookiePal, AtomTime, EditPad, etc. GetRight wasn't on the CD, but belongs among these apps that were vital back then but irrelevant now.
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| glitch32 on October 11, 2008 10:32 AM | I used to use one in dial up days, but I don't see any reason to anymore. I have tried DownThemAll and it seems to work well, but I don't notice enough extra speed to keep using it.
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| Per Hansson on October 11, 2008 12:12 PM | I used to use Getright when I was on dialup (which I had to endure longer than most of you guys I think)
Now that I've got broadband I don't use it anymore, I just use the built in file manager in Opera, and of course µTorrent for bigger stuff But a download manager like Getright still can be very good, because from any given server you are quite unlikely to get max of your line if it is fast (8mbps or so) What Getright then allows is downloading the same file from multipe servers (kinda like Torrent but not peers, just regular HTTP or FTP servers) It also allows downloading a file from both HTTP/FTP and Torrent I heard, but I have not tried that, as I said I stopped using it (sounded almost like a sales pitch there didn't it? :P)
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| michelboutros on October 11, 2008 1:27 PM | In my case, i use Free Download Manager, not because i care about a bit of speed increase, but because i can only download at night (when the bandwidth is unlimited), and Free Download Manager provides an excellent scheduler.
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| Anshrew on October 12, 2008 1:52 PM | I still use a download manager today. (Flashgot for Firefox with wxdownloadfast)
Reasons? 1. Most of the time my 15mbps connection is not close to maxed out. On some torrent's I reach up to 3mb/s [3000kb/s]down speeds. (usually hits just 2.5mb/s though), but when I download from a browser I see dismal speeds of 350kb/s - 500kb/s from most sites. Some sites I can max my speed on with a browser and I do so then but whenever it comes to downloading a large file - such as a game demo I get stuck with bad speeds most of the time. This is probably because the host wants to distribute the speed over any users equally... but still if you can use the download accelerator and achieve 2.5mb/s or higher why wouldn't you? 2. Firefox has a nice download system, but I find that pausing it often causes me to have to start the entire download again. 3. Not everything is available as a torrent
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| bun-bun on October 14, 2008 9:39 AM | Download accelerator's/managers are a thing of the past and IMO are now bloatware. The biggest reason i wont use google's chrome browser. I don't want the bloat.
Unless the file is insanely huge (2gb+) the managers serve no benefit except to those who prefer it.
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