Colin-uk.com

A review of download managers

Aug 9, 2009 Tech

So recently, ive had a need to download a large file (around 3GB), I tried 8 download managers before i found one that worked well, how sucky is that :p so i thought i’d write a small review about them.

FlashGet

I added the file to the download list, it immediatly started to dowload 105KB of the file and then stopped, it wouldnt let me do anything else. suckage. uninstalled.

Fresh Download Manager

Added the file to the download list, waited 20mins for it to allocated disk space for the file, gave up after it froze, did the same thing after restart, it did create a temporary file in my download directory though, which i then deleted because it was of no use. more suckage, uninstalled.

Get Left

Added the file to the queue, told me the file was of unknown size and refused to try and download it, not to mention the interface is butt ugly, i think its supposed to be a free version of getright, or something, anyways, suckage, uninstalled :p

LeechGet

I hadnt used Leechget in a while but i remember it was popular back when i used to use it so i thought it might have done a decent job, but no. aadded the file to the queue, then it created 3 connections to the file, each connection downloading a part of the file which i thought was pretty cool because it will be done quicker. the problem? Leechget thought the file was only 305mb, no wonder it only took a couple of minutes to finish the download, shame, i quite like the interface too :p

GetBot3

I’ve used this quite a bit in the past and its worked quite well, I guess it just doesnt handle large files very well. i added it to the download queue, it started downloading immediatly, it recognised the size of the file correctly, but there seemed to be an issue with speed or a glitch in its time estimated, it reported that it would take over a million hours to download, and it was only downloading from the server at about 512KB/s, when i know the server is capable of a lot more :pwhen it got to 100% i thought it had done but no, looking at the file size, it had only downloaded roughly half the size, the % counter carried on until it got to 200%, i wondered when it was going to stop, eventually, it started dropping and when the download was finished, it was at 100%, but at least i had the complete file, wrong :p just as it got to 100% it said “cannot save”, which i thought meant there was no space on the disk or it had no perimissions, so i tested it with another file and it saved with no problems, and there was plenty of space on the disk, so i dont know what went wrong there lol.

Internet Explorer

Yes, i know this isnt a download manager, but it can still download files via HTTP, it didnt work out to well, i thought the file was only 105KB so it downloaded me a 105KB file and put it in my downloads directory, suckage lol, unistal…oh wait :p

Firefox

I thought Firefox may have done a better job since its download manager seems to be a bit more dedicated, however it didnt seem to work out too well, firstly it only downloaded at half the speed the server was capable of, then when i finally got the file, it was corrupt :/ which sucked, so i had to delete the file it took over 2 hours to download.

Wget

The infamous wget, now for windows, yay :p this is a command line app so had to enter all the options on the command line to download the file, it seemed to connect to the server to download the file ok, but the speed was really low for some reason, it was like 25KB/s which could have been down to external factors but i didnt have these speed issues with other download managers so there must have been something up with it :p

Free Download Manager

FINALLY! ive managed to find a download manager which WILL recognise the size of the file properly, WILL download using maximum speed, and wont freeze up or crap out because of some silly connection glitch, i am actually downloading the file using this download manager as i type this, so i will edit this post soon with reports of wheather the file is ok or not. I hadnt used this download manager for years, i suoopse what also helped the speed was that this download manager also creates 3 connections to the file making it a much quicker download.

Horray :p