Are download accelerators good or not?

Do they work?
Do they do anything negative?

 

Never tried the accelerators, but I used DownloadExpress, which allows for picking up where left off if interupted,like in a power outage. Very useful for large downloads. Also does multiple downloads at the same time.

 

In low speed situation yes. I am on 256kbps DSL & use DAP.

They are more useful when the connection breaks in between & you can resume download from there on instead of downloading the complete file again.

 

I've recently changed internet providers, and the downloads speeds are now minimal (768 Kbps). My downloads are pathetically slow. Will an accelerator help in this situation?

 

Probably not, but download managers may help.

BTW I've a toy flying areoplane for sale, minimal construction required, full instructions included, only $5. Are you interested? A christmas present for the kids perhaps?

 

What does the download mgr do?
No thx on the plane, but I agree w/ you and Neil.
It's better to burn out than fade away.

 

If you have a break in the connection when downloading large files the dowload manager will continue the download without having to restart...

eg, 68Mb into a 240Mb download your internet connection breaks. Quite often you'd have to start from the beginning.

Sorry My keyboards borked little furry beast just decided it would be fun to spill juice all over it not easy to type right now

:edit, keyboard still not working but at least useable, furry beast was my dog dillon.

As I was saying with a download manager you won't have to restart it'll continue where you left off.

now does anyone have a spare nec versa premium key pad available

 

To Chas Berlin If you think that 768 Kbs is slow,when I was on dial-up, my download speed was only 1.4-1.7 Kbs.Took forever to download anything but the smallest programs.

 

Yeah, I hear you. But this is the age of "High Sped Internet" which is what I'm paying for. But wasn't willing to go $50/mo for the blistering high speed.

 

Exactly!

 

it is very useful specially when the connection is broaken

 

For me it's not about the connection, since it will automatically resume where it left off. It's about speed! Or the lack there of.

 

Hi

If you are using windows, then it will not reconnect to download automatically after a broken connection and definitly, it increases speed of download.

 

OK, I'll check it out then.
Is one any better than the rest?

 

I use Metaproducts Download Express - free. It certainly does speed up downloads by using up to 7 threads, on my machine by about 3 to 4 times, and the re-connecting is a real asset.

Roger

 

I've always thought everyone should spend a year forced to endure dialup. It's a character-building experience that develops patience and anger-management skills.

Trying to download anything on dialup is training even a jedi would find hard to complete.

 

There were actually a couple of maxconnection DWord tweaks that used to work quite well in Windows98 to "speed up" things with dial-up connections by breaking the http 1.0 and 1.1 protocols. I've also seen similar tweaks used on the same keys to "speed up" some broadband connections. However, I wouldn't necessarily recommend these for XP and I'd call it out of the question for Vista. I was not able to confirm a noticeable difference compared to XP's default settings when used with broadband.

 

Roger, I just download Download Express and started a file on Vuse, but it doesn't show on Vuse, so I'm not sure it's downloading.