In an era where high-speed broadband’s becoming common, a download manager is no longer a luxury or a power user’s domain – it’s something everyone needs. Fortunately the gap has been mostly filled by Firefox’s inbuilt manager. While this suffices for most sites, it does not offer even a fraction of the features a dedicated application can offer: multiple download links for the same file, segmented downloading, one-click downloads for multiple files etc.
It may seem that such a boatload of features is likely to be available only in paid apps. Fortunately, this is not the case. Thanks to the ever-expanding freeware and open source market, there are plenty of download applications out there that offer features rivaling commercial products – and, in some cases, even exceed them. Here’s our pick of three such applications.
Free Download Manager
Publisher: FreeDownloadManager.org
File size: 5754 Kb
Download link:
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Despite its “Captain Obvious” name, Free Download Manager is one of the best freeware programs available. Not only does it integrate with a wide variety of browsers, it also has a very well-designed interface, and separate clients for FTP and HTTP. It’s also a ‘site ripper’ – that is, it can download entire websites without much ado.
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**Orbit Downloader
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Publisher: OrbitDownloader.com
File size: 2217 Kb
Download link:
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Orbit Downloader belongs to a new breed of file managers that supports not only typical file extensions such as exe/com, but also has full support for download streaming media (audio and video, as well as flash SWF) from video sharing and other sites. It supports direct transfers from some popular sites such as YouTube, MySpace etc. It looks uncannily similar to Flashget (see below), and is easily one of the best download clients available today.
FlashGet
Publisher: Trend Media
File size: 4520 Kb
Download link:
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This formerly paid software has become virtually the de facto client for most users. Not only does FlashGet offer a smooth and well-desigued UI, it continues to exhibit light memory usage, and interfaces with all known browsers. It even offers a Bit Torrent client for P2P use, which expands its usefulness.


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