Reading Windows

Recently I once again went on the hunt for a better download manager than the one included in FF (and IE, etc.). Following criterias should be matched at all circumstances:

a) Multi-threaded download - ie. split download into several pieces to speed it up
b) A clean, nice interface
c) License must be either Freeware or Open Source

Some other criteria, which was not a must, but a 'would be nice':

d) If possible, a full-blown, up-to-date program and not just a down-scaled version of something else.
e) small in size (not the average 6 MB monster)

I've done this research for several times now, starting when I first heard about Go!Zilla and friends (must've been 1999 or so), but beside Star Downloader, which is by now not being developed further, and Fresh Download, which is a resource hog, I didnt know of any good ones.

Accidently I stumbled over a not so promising looking site named FreeDownloadManager.org.

"Yet another download manager that's called free but is IRL a stripped-down version of some other product", I thought. But I downloaded it, nevertheless. I've downloaded some others, tested all of them out and did neither find them satisfying my needs nor matching my criteria list as seen above. Last one I really find totally dishonest, because them folks first promise you something on their sites they dont stand to if you donwload their products. So all of this products went on my personal black list, but then I installed Free Download Manager (from now on called 'FDM').

What a wonderful difference! Not only does it do what I want - non-crippled download of data from the net - but it also has features I never thought about.

Like the three different modes: light, medium and heavy mode. In 'Heavy Mode', the program uses all possible resources to download the given data. It's also able to detect browser action and get down either 1 level or a specified mode.
Eg. if you're in 'Heavy mode', then it automatically switches into 'Medium mode' if you set it to the first option, or maybe even into 'Light mode' if you set the other option to that.

You can change the settings for downloading to your own fits and needs, not even for each single mode but also globally. Obviously, there's also an Optimization Wizard that helps you slightly by tuning your settings for a specific connection, although I'm missing pre-defined settings for european broadband connections.

Or have a look at the scheduler, which not only lets you decide at which time you want to let FDM download something for you, but has also such niceties as 'start when no download is running' - so you can have a wonderful download queue, while each and any file gets downloaded at full speed. :)

And then there are this nice additions, like the drag & drop-box, which can be found at the lower right corner of your monitor and is set to a very light transition factor (30% or so, I think), so it doesnt handicap you in your daily work and browsing. Next one is a transfer window which shows what's going on in short form. Of course, both of them can be turned off.

You even are able to download complete sites, although I neither have tested its functionality yet nor do I need that option. But's always a nice to have if you want to do all your download actions inside of only one application.

About ad- and spyware: According to Softpedia, it's completely spy-, adware- and virus-free. Personally I havent found anything yet, too, and even if there was something, it wouldn't get past my firewall. :D

cu, w0lf.

Naturally, I love Jesus very much. I love him so much that I'd like to crucify him all over again.

Sounds great, I've been looking for something like this myself. Thank you, ginsterbusch. I'll try it out for awhile and see how it goes.

I'm partial to wget, myself. Too bad it's bloated, full of spyware, and doesn't have any useful features. Oh well...

:-P

I should be ashamed of myself.