Speed Up Your Downloads With Internet Download Manager

Internet Download Manager is a brilliant bit of software with loads of features…

…but it’s let down by the fact that after 30 days users have to pay utilize all the features. But that shouldn’t put you off trying it – here’s why.

Despite its name, you will not actually be able to download the INTERNET if you choose to install Internet Download Manager. For some that will come as a disappointment, but for others it will ease a lot of anxiety, and that’s a good thing. Instead, Internet Download Manager (IDM) will allow to download the parts of the Internet or World Wide Web, that you want to download, such as movies, games, music, and other assorted files.

IDM has a lot going for it. It’s easy on the eye, the download and the install is also easy, the interface is intuitive, and it’s also easy to use.

Despite what the picture may imply, you do not get a paper box when you download Internet Download Manager

Why will it speed up my downloads?

The best download managers take a logical and systematic approach to speeding up and managing downloads, by breaking files up into manageable chunks of data. IDM is no exception to this rule, and does it work admirably in the background.

One of the best things about IDM and others of their kind, is that they let you start, pause, reset your computer, turn it off, turn it back on again, and resume downloading whenever you want. This is always a good thing, and means you don’t have to worry about dodgy internet connections or unexpected power cuts.(Certainly back in 1999 when I was downloading Counter Strike over a 56k connection, it was a Godsend.)

Of course few people have to suffer the ignominy of downloading anything at 1.2k a second these days, but a download manager still makes a lot of sense. Files are bigger now, and people want more from their internet experience.

Browser integration

One of IDM’s key features is that it integrates seamlessly into all of the main browsers and lets you download directly from the web-page you are on. Hurrah! Whether, you use Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Firefox, or even… Netscape, it works. (Seriously, apparently it does actually support Netscape.)

Clicking a download link in any of the above browsers will launch Internet Download Manager, and then rather than your usual browser “Save As” all you have to do is click the “Start Download” button and it will start downloading as fast as it can.

Faster, just not 5x

While the makers of IDM claim that by using Internet Download Manager, users can boost speeds by up to 5x the normal speed, all I can say to that is that I didn’t see those kinds of speeds. That said I would imagine that at any connection less than 10mb, there is probably a marked difference.

It also supports the features such as Pause and Resume as you have seen in the torrent clients. The files are downloaded by creating multiple connections to increase the download speed. Very likely to the torrent downloaders, IDM incorporates many features.

Another really nice feature is the Site Grabber or Site Spider also lets you grab all the images from an entire site for off-line browsing, and this does set it apart from other competitors on the field.

Bandwidth

Of course, download managers have a bit of a habit of dominating all your bandwidth, so as you would expect, there’s a Speed Limiter means you can restrict just how much bandwidth you give it to run, which is handy on metered connection, and also means you wont be put off doing other stuff on line at the same time you download.

Additional features include Error Recovery for Broken and disrupted downloads, and it also has a nifty HTTP and FTP protocol secure connection so that user safety is ensured. Nice.

Internet Download Manger (IDM) key features:

Speed downloads up to 5x times (Maybe)
Easy to Use
Browser Integration
Schedule Downloads
Pause and Resume capability
Error Recovery for Broken Downloads
MP3 and MPEG content processing
Multilingual support

Conclusions

Internet Download manager is good, and you get a 30 day trial to see what you think, and we think you’ll like it, but it’s not free.

A one year license costs US$11.95 and while the lifetime license only costs $24.95, there are other downloaders out there that cost nothing. That said, Internet Download Manager does come packed with features that most of the other free versions just don’t have, but it’s a question of whether you need all that extra stuff. Only you can decide.

Overall though, apart from the price, it’s very hard to fault what is an easy to use and very well polished piece of software.