Every avid net surfer cannot do without downloading content from the web. To me a browsing session is incomplete without downloading, be it an attachment from my email boxes, to MP3s, video files, software and all available form a download can come in.
All web browsers come with the ability to download files from the internet, but these are times in the cyber world where speed is of utmost importance, a luxury most browsers can’t offer. Enter the download managers. There exists an array of them but the one that beats them all is Internet Download Manager (IDM).
IDM is an award winning shareware (to be paid for) software that takes care of your download on the fast lane. According to its developers it is a tool to increase download speeds by up to five times, resume and schedule downloads. Comprehensive error recovery and resume capability will restart broken or interrupted downloads due to lost connections, network problems, computer shutdowns, or unexpected power outages. Surely it delivers on its promises as stated above. IDM interface though a little old fashion does not take the performance out of it. I will now take you through the wonderful features which are packed in IDM.
At installation IDM detects all browsers present on your system and integrates smoothly and perfectly with them. This can however be changed in the option panel if you do not want it integrated with all browsers but to a specific one on your system. Perhaps you have a browser which was not detected at installation; it can be added by going to the option panel.
The pause/resume feature lets you pause and resume downloads at will. Some folks prefer monitoring each download to the end, so this feature will be a delight to them.
IDM gives you the option of queuing downloads and it will download them one after the other, preferably in order of size. Care should be taken when using this feature to avoidoverloading to maximise browsing speed. This is easily done by setting the number of downloads at a time.
Another interesting feature of IDM is that it allows the addition of login info for sites that require authorization. This is mostly encountered in sites like 4shared and Megaupload (now defunct). Once this is done IDM downloads automatically without asking for those details anymore.
Upon visiting a site with video contents or streaming media, like on YouTube and online radio stations, IDM will prompt for download through a little pop close to the video, media or at the bottom of the webpage.
For the organised, IDM offers a default download arrangement of downloads in categories in the download folder (video, music, compressed, programs, documents). This keeps you from the task of having to search for the downloaded files here and there.
Here is a little test I carried to compare the speed of download on IDM. It took exactly 50secs52msecs to download a file of 10.916Mb with IDM and the same file downloaded at 1min37secs13msecs under the same network speed. That is almost double the time it took IDM to do same.
The only annoyance I found on IDM is the popping when it detects any downloadable media on a webpage. Also when a webpage is highlighted, it automatically pops a window with all links available on the page for download.
Overall IDM is the best download manager out there in the market. It is highly recommended for all heavy downloads.
