Softworld editor's review -
Easy to use and lightning fast download manager
Internet Download Manager is an application which proves to be extremely useful when you download all kind of files.
The moment you have finished the installation of this program, process that doesn't take to long, and you start it you are welcomed by a decent looking interface.
As we all know most the users that are using this type of programs are interested how easy is to use the application and how fast is the downloading process.
Let's start with what i believe is the most important aspect: the download speed. I have picked for this test a 300Mb file. The server where the file was located was definitely not the fastest but despite this the downloading speed was excellent.
I have managed to achieve more than 1MB/s. Downloading the file just through a browser, i did not managed to reach more than 300, 400 KB/s.
Now let's take a look at the program. As i have mentioned previously the main interface looks good. The menu system is extremely intuitive.
Using similar programs, the main functions are represented by icons and there is no text in order to figure out what exactly they do. You have to point the mouse on them and wait for a few moments for the text to appear.
However with Internet Download Manager the situation is totally different. Under each icon there is text and because of this the moment you click on the icon you know exactly what you are doing.
What i like a lot about this program is that it can integrate with various browsers such as Opera, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer etc. This is certainly a great feature because all the downloads will be automatically launched with IDM.
However if you are an old school user you can very easily add the URL's manually. To do that you just need to press the Add URL button. A window appears in which you will be prompted to introduce the address.
After pressing OK another window will show up. Here you will have to set the location where you want your file to be downloaded. You can choose to start the download process right at that moment or you can do it later.
Right next to Add URL can be found the Resume, Stop, Stop All and Delete buttons. These can be used to control all the downloads that are currently in progress.
Now entering Options, here can be made various settings. You can set the application with which browser to integrate, set the default and temporary download locations, establish your Internet connection type, save logins for various sites etc.
A very cool function that this program has is Scheduler. Basically you can set a download to start and stop at a specified time. When the downloading process is completed you can make the application to automatically shut down and even to turn off your computer.
Also what is very nice is that all of your downloads are placed into specific categories: Compressed, Documents, Music, Programs, Video, Finished, Unfinished.
If you are not satisfied with the default look of the program you can easily customize it by going into View, Toolbar. Here you are given the option to use various buttons and also to look for new toolbars.
Very unique at this download manager is the Grabber feature. Basically you can download specific files from a website that are specified with filters such as all the pictures or all the audio files.
Internet Download Manager is without a doubt an impressive application. It offers top notch downloading functions, a very intuitive menu system and lightning fast downloads.
On the downside although the interface looks decent there is certainly room for improvement and there is no support for the BitTorrent protocol.
Good:
-fast downloads
-intuitive controls
-supports lots of browsers
-Grabber feature
Bad:
-not the best looking interface
-no support for Bittorrent
Version 6.06.8 reviewed on: 02 Jul 2011
Publisher's description
Schedule, resume and accelerate downloads by up to 5 times with this accelerator
Accelerate downloads by up to 5 times, schedule downloads, recover and resume broken downloads. The program features an adaptive download accelerator, dynamic file segmentation, high speed settings technology, and multipart downloading technology to accelerate the download process. It reuses available connections without additional connect and login stages to improve download performance. Comprehensive error recovery and resume capability will restart broken or interrupted downloads due to lost connections, network problems, computer shutdowns, or unexpected power outages. Internet Download Manager can connect to the Internet at a set time, download the files you want, then disconnect or even shut down your computer when its done.
Internet Download Manager supports firewalls, proxy and mirror servers, FTP, HTTP, HTTPS protocols, redirects, cookies, download queues, directories with authorization, MP3 audio and MPEG video content processing, and a large number of different server platforms. IDM integrates seamlessly into all browsers automatically (IE, FireFox, Opera etc). It can be also integrated into any other Internet applications that use FTP, or HTTP protocols.
The new version adds video grabber that can be used to download FLV videos from YouTube, GoogleVideo, MySpaceTV etc, it also has Download Panel for IE and FireFox that appears on top of a web-player when IDM detects multimedia request, MMS protocol support, speed limiter for comfort browsing and the site grabber feature. Grabber lets you download, for example all audio files from a web site and subsets of web sites, or complete websites for offline browsing. It adds the complete compatibility with Windows Vista, the unique integration into all latest browsers, enhanced virus protection. Completely changed IDM scheduler. Added periodic synchronization of files and the possibility to create new queues for downloading or synchronization. Added new features on starting and stopping queue processing.
Changes on the new version:Complete Windows 7 support, completely redeveloped scheduler, YouTube grabber that download FLV videos from YouTube, Google Video, MySpaceTV and other popular sites, MMS protocol support, speed limiter and the site grabber feature. Added support for miltiple links in clipboard.
