Started using Dta quite a while back best thing so far. Though its sketchy as to whether or not ill need it after firefox 3 comes out with its(supposedly)new and improved download manager.

ssuasw

Flashget was my first thought as well. I'd have thought that'd definitely be on the list.

mobiusuk

Free Download Manager and Filezilla for years on me FireFox browser... love it, great tools to have.

xint

flashget?

MyEasyTV

Really some love should be thrown the way of Deluge. Transmission looks pretty, but Deluge has an unmatched feature set, very lightweight and runs on all three platforms.

Kudos for including wget!

b00gs

On my Windows pc I use Free Download Manager. On my mac, I switched from iGetter to Speed Download. I love how I can automatically move files to different folders depending on the extension.

jplumey

Do any of these allow you to resume a download after you've been disconnected?

Finch

DTA is fantastic, and the new beta is even better.

Rae

@Finch: DTA allows you to resume broken downloads if you make sure to set the download chunks option to "0". For PC's, you can resume downloads pretty much at any point, even if it's the next day. For Mac's, it seems less reliable if you wait that long.

eax

I maintain 60 computers and keeping them all up to date is a full time job. I've found File Hippo [filehippo.com] a very convenient place to find updates and download them. I've used it to download the latest versions when building a fresh install, though keeping a list what you software you want is up to the user. I've not had good luck with some of the other file repositories being up to date. (Win-Get comes to mind.)

blmjr

I download huge files a lot and it all depends on the application what download manager I use.

When downloading from webdav location I use DTa, since flashget just seems to stall on the (intranet) webdav location I use. Generally it is pretty speedy, but it uses lots of CPU and if freezes firefox every time it's finishing a file (most likely because I download to a network drive). Still it is the most convenient way to download many different files linked to one webpage, so I just go to another workstation while DTa is munching away.

Flashget is pretty nice and speedy because it can multithread on one file over FTP, but once again, flashget stalls at the end of a download when writing a file to a network drive and it has a 4 GB size limit.

When downloading a bunch of files I go to filezilla, it's low in resources, doesn't stall like the aforementioned download managers, has no 4 GB filesize limit. Downside is that it'll download only one file at once, so flashget may be faster for a few files, but Filezilla scales much, much better.

Blikkie

(Chanting) DownThemAll! DownThemAll! DownThemAll!

Seriously, I remember right-clicking 20 times to save 20 files, before DownThemAll came into my life. There's probably a couple of things it doesn't do, but I don't miss them much.

JamesF

Nice to see DownThemAll getting the praise it deserves. I can't recommend this free plugin to enough people. Spread the word

dj_skilz

FDM seconded, get it here:
[freedownloadmanager.org]

Should be top of the list!

Nemo Fairbrother

I use a flashget / orbit combination in order to get my rapidshare downloads to work :)

uffe pep

Plus one vote for Orbit and its Grab++ feature!

hrsa

I was using Flashget for ages, and also, it is now freeware; however, when downloading multiple streams from rapidshare (if you have an account there) Flashget seems to fail: if it's downloading multiple streams (say 5 streams) from rapidshare and one stream is finished it can't seem to begin a new stream (to keep the total downloading streams at 5). Thus, it never finishes downloading.

So I switched to Orbit downloaded which works for there and pretty much everywhere else.

da5id_nz

I've tried FileZilla for FTP but found that I like ALFTP a lot more. I switch to Cyberduck for when I'm using a Mac.

shadypghguy

Download Statusbar (the Firefox extension) provides a great replacement for the default download manager in FF. Not sure how it plays with stuff like dTa, et al. Every time I have to use a public computer at school I remember how useless the default FF download manager is.

darthbith

FlashGot Extension + Orbit here too. I ran into some issues with DTA, though it's much better than the standard FF download manager.

scuba04

+1 for Flashget

gog

Net Transport (last free version: [www.321download.com]) is my fave for big downloads (not torrents). HTTrack ([www.httrack.com]) is great for downloading websites. Opera ([www.opera.com]) has good built-in functionality for downloading all the links on a single web page. FileZilla and uTorrent are my other choices. :-)

Capsaicin

I'm surprised to see that Free Download Manager wasn't included - it's the best download manager I've tried on Windows. Also with it being made Open Source hopefully someone will port it to Linux, which I don't think has any download managers of that quality. Downloader for X probably comes the closest though.

serak

axel -> [axel.alioth.debian.org]

i didn't realise that it was so unpopular!! nobody here has mentioned it yet...

chukaman

I'd vote FlashGet as the #1 free downloader, combine it with FlashGot for Firefox and it cant be beat.

Another downloader is DAP it's free with ads or you can pay for a ad free copy that also (supposedly) gives you higher download speeds, DAP can also be a little buggy sometimes - it wont run on my system at all.
I highly recommend FlashGet + FlashGot.

Darth_Ninja

Do you guys seriously download from places like Rapidshare that often? Those sites are a joke. They've made a tool of you if you actually bought a subscription. Get off LueLinks (yeah, it doesn't exist, blah blah blah) and start using something decent.

Massive files/illegal ones (like linux distros/free independent films/piracy/huge patches/etc.) BT is the way to go, much faster and reliable. You don't have to deal with any BS downloading rules/pay to download crap either. It blows my mind that people put up with that.

Anything else that can be had legally, usually isn't that large, and DTA will handle them fine from places like SourceForge. Even if its still classified as massive, if something can be had legally - its usually on a good server, meaning you'll get good speeds.

I have no problem capping out my 10mbps(more like 15mbps, but I pay for 10) connection, on BT and using DTA. Who wants to wait on RapidShare or send them money to avoid deliberately placed inconveniences? Hell even with a subscription those sites are a pain.

I already know someone is going to complain about BT being slow/it being hard to find things - If you have either or both of those problems, your simply not using it correctly. These are the same people that use the "Easy Setup Wizard" that comes with their router, or just plugged everything in and started when they could have easily looked up easily understandable information online and had a properly set up network. It really isn't that hard. Especially with all these sites out now that practically do all the work for you in finding good torrents/setting up your network. (Which I'm pretty sure would be against the rules here to post because they could easily be used for illegitimate purposes). Then theres the people who say they want to download things at work - Downloading things at work, legal or not, is a terrible idea, especially with large files that are sucking up tons of bandwidth, I'm sure your employer will be overjoyed when they find out. Especially if they understand how a download manager actually works. But I guess people just don't care about their jobs very much. It's really that hard to set up a download the night/morning before work, and then when you come home it's finished? You can completely automate the whole thing, tell it to download things FROM work if you HAVE to, shut down the PC when finished, connect/disconnect, etc. BT is so much better, and your not going to be waiting long for stuff you can't get off BT using something like DTA. (which is like next to nothing nowadays.)

Oh and one more thing, I only mentioned DTA all the time because its what I use, I like it because its an extension to firefox which makes things easier, I'm sure these other download managers are fantastic in their own ways too.

shibathedog

THIS IS outrage! where is orbitdownloader!? clearly it is one of THE best download managers ever!

Gmanpawned

I think that the definition for "Download Manager" that I use and the definition of "Download Manager" that the author uses are two very different beasts.

I'd submit that a download manager is an application which manages downloads initiated by external agents using arbitrary transfer protocols within a consistent interface.

An application can contain a download function and some download management functions but that does not make it a download manager. For example, a BitTorrent application that manages its BitTorrent transfers is not a download manager, it's a BitTorrent application with some download management functions. wget would be a download application with no management functions.

Have a look at the comparison of "Download Manager" applications at Wikipedia:

[en.wikipedia.org]

DanRP

I scrolled to the bottom of the entry just to make sure DTA won. It did. LH still rocks. =)

ronocdh

@Gmanpawned:

I'm with you. Orbit works great, has all the features, and th excellent grab++ sniffer to download all those flash movies no matter who the hoster is

LordDaMan

So much love for DownThemAll. Definitely one of my must-have FF extensions.

phoenix

Orbit Downloader is by far the most efficient and intuitive (read productive) manager I've come across. I'm surprised it's not on the list!

harmx

Orbit downloader is fantastic and was one of the first to include support for ripping down flv vids as well.

nerotic

I don't know about Macs, but Transmission is available for linux. I still prefer Deluge, as someone mentioned earlier.

leftystrat

@shibathedog: Hmmm, yeh. I dislike torrent downloading for some reason. It just *feels* more illegal or uncertain.

Using rapidshare I know for certain that the file is there and no one's going to pull out halfway through a download or something. I guess that's just me.

Orbit works great for me for this, as I've mentioned, together with FlashGot.

da5id_nz

Blasphemy! A top 10 Download Managers list without flashget is like a top 10 desserts list without cheesecake ....and God knows how much i love my cheesecake.

iceman7

I'm also a big fan of Free Download Manager.

blazer425

oops, I meant big brother

da5id_nz

ps, check out this interesting article about how bog brother is infiltrating P2P..

da5id_nz

Have been using flashget + flashgot firefox add-on for a long time. It now supports BT & emule download (haven't tried the latter).

Free Download Manager seems good. Will try.

wildeny

Yep, DownThemAll! rules! But, to download YouTube video clips, I would like to recommend Safari.

Its activity window (Ctrl+Alt+A) does the work. =)

Regards,
mgthantzin

mgthantzin

I use the Flashgot extension with FreeDownload Manager. I have it set up on every computer I use. I also use Unplug for videos.

jkersh

Flashgot + Orbit works just fine for me.

hideki

I use DownloadHelper for Firefox all the time. I think it is way better than Download them all. I had used Down them all before and I don't like it.

RedSuzaku

@da5id_nz:

For every stupid plan like that they come up with, 3 reinforcements are put in place. The pirates are always ahead of the game. That article your looking at right now is written in a way that makes it seem like a way bigger deal than it was. Speaking of which it was awhile ago too.

But if your not downloading anything illegal, why should you be worried?

I also wouldn't worry about seeders pulling out and not getting the file unless you make a habit of downloading torrents with 1 seed. Good torrents usually have close to 1000 seeds. Some (like an ubuntu torrent I looked up just for fun) have around 33,000. But on average you get at least a few hundred if your looking in the right places.

Even just a few hundred seeds compared to rapidshares...what 12 servers?

shibathedog

For years now, I've been using Download Express from MetaProducts and have been very happy with it. It's true freeware (not adware), works with Firefox once the MetaProducts Integration extension is installed, and allows me to save partial downloads and resume them later. It also saves a record of all the downloads I've made using the program so that I can go back to that site if I need to. I highly recommend it.

GigiNYC

@shibathedog:
While bt is an amazing resource, in situations where BT, Usenet and every other P2P application are blocked, access to rapidshare really does help.

The plans are cheap enough, considering the 5GB per day limit (spread over 5 days) and armed with a few good search engines you can basically find anything that is on bt anyway.

scuba04

wow everybody loves downloading! :D
i use Free Download Manager and love its simple, practical interface - and it is nicely integrated with Firefox too!

Syahid A.