Download Managers. Do we need them? No. Do they help? Definitely. But firstly, what consitutes a download manager? What are Download Managers? Download Managers are software, mostly available on Windows, that are of use for users who simply download a lot. If you download a file or two every week, you do not need a download manager. However for those people who download movies (legally of course), music, documents, ISO files and games, Download Managers can prove to be very useful. How do they work? Download Managers mostly have two main functionalities. That is the actual managing of downloaded files and download acceleration. Managing Downloaded Files When files are downloaded, especially if you download a lot, they can clutter and turn your disk in to quite a mess. Download Managers solve this problem by properly sorting your files in to categories by folder, as well as providing options to delete certain files if they are no longer of use. This effectively allows you to download as much as you want, yet retain the peace of mind that your downloads are organized and stored effectively. Download Acceleration Probably the most useful feature of download managers is download acceleration. Download acceleration is a internet transfer technology that downloads files up five times faster than your regular web browser does. How does download acceleration work? Normally web servers set a limit as the maximum speed a download can achieve. Such limits can range from 100kb/s to 1mb/s. However download managers intelligently split up the file to be downloaded in to several segments, each with its own unique connection to the web server. This effectively stretches the maximum speed limit to several times larger than the one that the web server originally allows. Thus we can see that if a web server allowed a maximum download speed for 1mb/s, using a download manager that splits the download in to five different connections, the maximum download rate has just grown to 5mb/s! So which one should I use? This really depends on you. If you are short on cash, or just do not want to purchase software in general, there are some free download managers that are quite amazing. We recommend using Free Download Manager, Orbit Downloader or FlashGet. Navigate to their websites and take a look for yourself. However the best download manager in our opinion is Internet Download Manager. Although their user interface needs some polishing, IDM is a very fast file downloader. On top of that, it also manages your download library in to folders by format and genre very effectively. The main reason why we believe Internet Download Manager is the best download manager is because of its consistency and reliability across a wide range of websites and protocols. Typically IDM speeds up your download by approximately three to five times, allowing us to quickly download large ISO images in a just few minutes! If you are on Mac OSX or Linux, don't worry, download managers exists there as well! OSX and Linux users can try jDownloader, a cross-platform, download manager that is quite well designed and works without any serious issues. So in closing another blog article, Download Managers, although not absolutely required for those that download a lot, can prove to be extremely helpful especially if you value time and organization. To find out more, click here for a comprehensive list of the top download managers, both free and commercial. Till next time, XetoWare |