firefox has a built-in, default download manager. It is good for
small downloads. If you download something big (like the
586MB ubuntu iso CD image), then you really need a third-party
download manager/accelerator. I don't wish anyone to
repeat the same experience I had the other day when after an overnight download, it crashed at 90% complete.
Below, I review 2 download managers. These 2 Windows-only software
are quite similar in features. Both speed up your large downloads,
and will auto-resume if something unexpected interrupts your
download. Also, both support Firefox as well as IE.
leechget is available in 2 versions: Personal Edition (free for private use but only one download at a time), and the Premium Edition (for commercial use and you can have multiple simultaneous downloads).
Download Accelerator Plus (DAP) also comes in 2 versions: a free but
ads-supported version, and a non-free, no-ads premium version.
I tried out both the leechget Personal, and the DAP personal versions.
My privacy program (Spybot-S&D) picked up the DAP ads as spyware, but it could not delete the corresponding Windows registry entries. I tried to uninstall DAP, but DAP did not seem to want to be uninstalled cleanly. Even after I finally uninstalled it, spybot still reported the same spyware entries. I finally resorted to manually
delete the DAP Window entries!
I prefer leechget personal over DAP.
If you use leechget with firefox , you need to download the
Mozilla/Netscape/Opera Plug-in, in addition to the leechget
installer itself. This plug-in automatically intercepts any file download, and hands over the job to leechget instead of the
default firefox download manager. You should install the plugin to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins.
A feature I like about leechget is that I can specify how many pieces that leechget should split the file into for simultaneous transfer. For example, in an idle system, I can specify that it uses 6 tasks (max 20) to download a file.
The bottom line is that I don't want to pay for a download manager, and I like leechget enough that I decide I can live with downloading one file at a time.
There are many download managers out there. If you want a tool that works on both Linux and Windows, and you prefer the command-line interface rather than GUI, then you want to check out
wget. Alert: wget is for geeks only.
1 comment:
This comment has nothing to do with download plug-in. I am not a geek once a while :-)
When I was reading this blog, Peter mentioned "I tried to uninstall DAP, but DAP did not seem to want to be uninstalled cleanly." It made me recall an idea once my husband and I were joking and laughing heavily about: the next generation of software licensing enforcement will not be pay-before-for-you-install, but to be pay-to-get-it-uninstalled!
Actually, this concept is already very common in general life experience: have you ever or know anyone pay in order to get away from / stay out of trouble that others causing you/him/her?
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