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hsapiens
hsapiens
11 March 2007 @ 03:51 pm
Download Manager Recs?  
I'm looking for recommendations -- or warnings -- on free download managers that work with Firefox. I had one years and years ago when I was still using the Netscape that came with my Neosoft dial-up account but I haven't used one since.

Out of the box, the Firefox D/L manager is very very very slow on my WinXP machine, introducing a pause of up to 45 seconds to each d/l. Even worse, saving a picture using Firefox freezes Firefox for a couple of minutes. It may resume operation after that or it may just hang. I can d/l almost instantaneously if I use IE to do it. I've been opening IE specifically to d/l and ignoring the whole problem but now I'm replacing a bunch of my lost files, I'm d/l-ing a lot and I figured it's time to solve the problem.

I'm using:
Win XP
Firefox 2.0.0.2

I just added the Firefox plug-in:
FlashGot 0.5.98.070302 (here's a list of d/l managers that integrate with it)

What I need:
- To right-click a link and save the file
- To right-click a pic and save it
- To pause a download & restart it
- To have several connections at once to speed up d/l's
- To limit number of connections to a server since that's often a request of people who make files available.

Most of the linked D/L managers claim to do these things. Anyone love her d/l manager? Hate it?
 
 
Current Mood: curious
 
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[identity profile] moss6886.livejournal.com on March 11th, 2007 09:12 pm (UTC)
I've been using GetRight (http://www.getright.com/) for a very long time and have absolutely no complaints about it. It will do everything you mentioned and does support Firefox (http://www.getright.com/firefox.html). They upgrade frequently and supposedly even support BitTorrent these days though I haven't tried that yet.

I have experimented with other download managers and I keep going back to GetRight without any hesitation.
[identity profile] abydosdork.livejournal.com on March 12th, 2007 12:55 am (UTC)
I can second that... Been using GetRight for ages, had no problems with it.
Mish: Teryl -- Sunny Colors[identity profile] hsapiens.livejournal.com on March 12th, 2007 03:42 pm (UTC)
Hey, you! Thank you for the info. I feel a LOT better spending money on a program if I know it's a good one. :)
[identity profile] abydosdork.livejournal.com on March 12th, 2007 03:49 pm (UTC)
I've been using it as a shareware, I put up with its countdowns and offers to buy. Try to see if it works for you, too.
Mish: Teryl -- Sunny Colors[identity profile] hsapiens.livejournal.com on March 12th, 2007 07:30 pm (UTC)
I'm exactly the sort of person they make those mag screens for because I completely hate them. I'm willing to put up with it for the purposes of evaluation but if it works like I suspect it will, I'll be shelling out money so that I'm not nagged.
[identity profile] abydosdork.livejournal.com on March 12th, 2007 09:08 pm (UTC)
Right :D

I don't mind them much, then again I'm not downloading stuff quite like I used to. Or I end up mirroring sites to sort through them late.
Mish: Teryl -- Sunny Colors[identity profile] hsapiens.livejournal.com on March 12th, 2007 10:42 pm (UTC)
Whereas I go in spurts of downloading. If I'm feeling stuck at making icons, my favorite thing to do is either hunt for some new screencaps or, if I feel as if I'm in a rut, looking for new textures to play with. I end up downloading a substantial number of files in the course of a session.

I have my trial installed. Now, to figure out how to configure it...
[identity profile] el-gilliath.livejournal.com on March 12th, 2007 01:53 am (UTC)
Thirding. Fantastic DL manager by my standards, and I've tried loads of them.
Mish: Thor -- Party Man[identity profile] hsapiens.livejournal.com on March 12th, 2007 03:43 pm (UTC)
:) This seems to be the winner program. I never would have plonked down $30 without strong recommendations. Thank you!
Mish: J/D -- D & J[identity profile] hsapiens.livejournal.com on March 12th, 2007 03:40 pm (UTC)
This seems to be the consensus D/L manager. Thank you for the rec; I'm unlikely to spend $30 on a program without good word of mouth because I've been burned one too many times.

It's worth $30 to me to solve my download problem.
[identity profile] moss6886.livejournal.com on March 12th, 2007 11:09 pm (UTC)
You can actually try before you buy with this, if you want. I will say that it was the first shareware program I ever bought, back when I couldn't really afford it (probably twelve or thirteen years ago now), and I still count it as one of my best software purchases ever.

Hope you like it even half as much as I do!
[identity profile] telepresence.livejournal.com on March 12th, 2007 12:26 am (UTC)
I have a question for you, do you tend to keep the history of your downloaded files in the download manager? That is to say, when it's downloading and the window is open, is there a long list of previously downloaded/completed stuff there? In my experience, cleaning that list up (hitting the clean up button) speeds up the default FF DL manager behavior considerably.
Mish: Ackles -- Coffee Addict (anim)[identity profile] hsapiens.livejournal.com on March 12th, 2007 03:52 pm (UTC)
Very good question. I opened the D/L manager to check even though I've downloaded very few files using Firefox given all the freezing/crashing -- and it crashed Firefox. :) I had looked into this before and came up with the need to delete file listing manually (why?!?!) but didn't check much further since I hadn't actually gotten the d/l manager to work...

Prompted by your question, though, I rethought this and realized that I do still have Mozilla installed and that I had used that to download. I opened that up, saw *years* of downloads, tried to delete...and it froze.

I deleted the downloads.rdf files but that had no effect. All the files are still listed in the managers for both programs. I tried deleting one file reference and it took, no joke, 5 minutes. I figured I had nothing to lose so I set it to deleting everything while I'm at work today. We'll see if that works.

I will do my best to clear those out and try a d/l manager. If that still doesn't work, I guess it's time to back up all of my e-mail, preferences, filters, and bookmarks and uninstall both Mozilla and Firefox (I know, that's an unwieldy combo but Thunderbird kept crashing, so...) and do clean installs.
Mish: C&H -- Yay![identity profile] hsapiens.livejournal.com on March 12th, 2007 10:40 pm (UTC)
THANK YOU! Asking me this question forced me to revisit an issue I'd thought handled. Deleting years of download history in Mozilla solved my Firefox problem.

Now, of course, I'm paranoid about deleting that history. Sure wish there were an option to check off, "Save only the last 10 downloads," or something. Actually, I don't need a history at all since I save in only 3 places, depending on the content. Ah well. :)
[identity profile] telepresence.livejournal.com on March 13th, 2007 02:21 pm (UTC)
Yay! I'm glad that helped. :)
[identity profile] thepouncer.livejournal.com on March 12th, 2007 12:45 am (UTC)
(here from SGA Noticeboard's friendslist)

I use DownThemAll (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/201/), which is a Firefox extension.

You can read more about it's capabilities here (http://lifehacker.com/software/firefox/geek-to-live--supercharge-your-firefox-downloads-with-downthemall-239561.php) - it does everything you want, I think, plus extra.
Mish: Rodney -- St. Rodney of Atlantis[identity profile] hsapiens.livejournal.com on March 12th, 2007 03:59 pm (UTC)
Welcome to my LJ! Thank you for helping me. :)

I think - *fingers crossed* - that clearing out the d/l history from Mozilla is going to solve a lot of my problems and then an extension could come in really handy. The "download all the *.jpgs on a page" feature looks REALLY handy since a lot of texture makers just post pages of textures rather than *.zip files. That would be a wonderful feature to have.

Thank you!