Fresh Download: Program Speeds Up Downloads for Dialup Users

I recently needed to download an 80 megabyte file for a contest using a dial-up connection. After three unsuccessful attempts, all of which resulted in spending huge chunks of time (between four and ten hours) watching over my download because my Internet provider kicks me offline for being "inactive", I decided I'd had enough. I searched for programs that would allow me to pause and resume my downloads. I found such a program called Fresh Download.

This program is completely free. When you click Download, it asks for your name and e-mail address. I was wary of this, but have received no spam since. The reason they need your e-mail address is to send you the registration information for the program. The first e-mail message sent to you contains a confirmation link, and the second contains your registration information. They've sent me a few update notifications, as well as recommendations for other downloads I might like.

If you don't want to receive these e-mails, there is no harm in blocking their e-mail address after you receive your registration information. Fresh Download was the best program I have found so far, and the only one that was free and without spyware. The others were trials, or required that I install some extra software from their sponsors. If you're willing to pay more for a more powerful program, I suggest you keep searching, and in the meantime use this to start.

Here is a brief overview of the features you can use:

Pause and resume features for those really big files (and for a dial-up user, even 20 megabytes counts as "really big".)
Can resume your download(s) where you left off even if you needed to shut down or restart your computer during the download(s).
Up to eight simultaneous connections for each download to speed up the process and help with time-outs. Cuts about 30% of download time off.
User-specified number of download retries (each time you pause, resuming counts as "retrying" as if it were a time-out).
User-specified schedules for downloading when you know you won't be fighting the download for bandwidth.
Integration into the most popular browsers (including Mozilla, Netscape and Opera).
Can be used with all versions of Windows operating systems, with the possible exception of Vista.
It's completely free, so no worries about trial dates and payment.
No spyware, and it allows your anti-virus program to scan files for viruses.

And now, a longer and more in-depth explanation of what these features are and how they can be used:

Fresh Download allows the user to simultaneously download from up to eight simultaneous connections per download, which will drastically speed up the download. (I recommend four connections or less for dial-up users. Anyone with high speed will be able to use all eight with no trouble.) What this means is that Fresh Download will simultaneously open the specified number of connections of the file, which cuts down about a third of your overall download time. There is also a pause feature, which I use frequently when I need to use the Internet during a download.

As all dial-up users know from experience, you can't download a large file and hope to do anything else online at the same time. With Fresh Download you can simply pause your download whenever you need to and resume it once you're ready. I recommend that you set the Download Retry to at least 200. This can be done by opening Fresh Download, clicking Options, selecting the Connection tab and typing in the value of your choice. The initial retry number is very low, and did not work well for me. If your download reaches the maximum number of download retries, it will stop. This is not a problem. Simply close the download window, open Fresh Download, and double click on the download in the list to get another 200 tries (you can, of course, set it higher or lower depending on your needs). I learned very early on that using the "Start" and "Restart" features in the Fresh Download main window would restart the entire download, rather than resuming where you left off. Instead of using those, double click the file you want to resume and the download window will open and pick up where you left off.

Another perk for me was that I could turn my computer off before a download had finished and know that I could still resume it the next time I turned my computer back on. You can also integrate Fresh Download into Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla Firefox and Firebird, Opera, Slim Browser, Avant, and Maxthon. This way you don't have to find the URL of the download file and add it to the list manually (which can sometimes be tricky). To do this, you access Fresh Download's Options, click the Integration tab, and select the browsers in which you would like Fresh Download to integrate (if your browser is not in the list, you check the box beside "Integrate into other browser").

Fresh Download to work with all Windows operating systems, all the way back to Windows 95. Vista is not on their list, but I believe it is also supported. It also has a built-in zip file extractor, which is very handy for those of you who don't have WinZip or any other less popular zip extractor.