AppFlow

Speed Download – For Speedy Downloads

Speed Download

Downloads.  These have become such an integral part of modern day computing.  We no longer think before pressing the ‘download’ button.  We download anything, from Music to applications, and yet somehow, we still don’t complain when a download crawls along, being overtaken by that snail moving across your desk  (you laugh now, but have you ever tried it?  Racing snail vs. download?)!  Surely there is a better way to download files.  Surely they can be faster!

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Enter Speed Download.  Speed Download (SD) is a download manager application that manages all of your downloads outside of your browsers download manager.  This means that, once installed, SD will be responsible for downloading all applications, whether you’re using Safari, Chrome or FireFox.

Interface

At first glance, the speed download interface looks rather complicated.  It is, in effect, really rather simpler.

The main window of SD is populated with any files that you have downloaded.  This not only acts as a great history browser, telling you when each download was completed, but also gives you a whole host of other, potentially useful information, such as the size of the file and average KB/s that it downloaded at.

Speed Download Interface

My favourite feature here, however, has to be the ‘remove’ button.  As well as the obvious, removing the entry from your download history, SD’s ‘remove’ button will move the associated files straight to the trash.  This is really useful for clearing up those no-longer-needed DMGs. (or in fact, downloads of any sort!)

Features

Speed Download is an extremely feature rich download manager.  In addition to the cool ‘remove’ button, SD has a nifty feature where by it will resume any downloads that were interrupted by internet connection or even the user.  This is really useful for larger files, particularly if you start them in the workplace.  Need to run off, simply shut the lid and continue later.

Another common problem with downloading these days is the volume of material that we download.  This can be many different file types, and to find the one file that you need at the one time that you need it may take a lot of digging through that downloads stack.  SD has an automatic sorting method where by it will sort your downloads into the most appropriate folders.  This is, of course, all customisable through the preferences window.›

Tweaking the Preferences

More Features!

In addition to being a super-speedy download manager, Speed Download has a whole host of other features that can prove to be very useful.

For Example, SD has a built in FTP client, as well as the ability to create peer to peer networks with other SD users.  It also integrates with your Apple iDisk and can upload straight to RapidShare.

To The Testing!

It’s all very well talking about Speed Download’s awesome features, but this is no use if it doesn’t actually work for doing what we’ll all use it most for, i.e. downloading files quickly.  I feel a good old fashioned, scientific (ish) test is in order!

As a test file, I used the iso file for Ubuntu Linux 9.10.  I simultaneously started it the Chrome Download manager and in Speed Download, before sitting back and watching the bars crawl along.

It quickly became evident which was going to win!  Speed Download predicted 1 hour to complete the download (last column) at around 150-200 KB/s (column right after the progress bar).  Chrome, however, settled with predicting 5 hours to complete the download at around 30-40 KB/s.

Speed Download on Ubuntu

Chrome on Ubuntu

Conclusion

Speed Download is an excellent download manager that can seriously increase your download speeds.  It has a lot of built in features to make it more than just your average download manager, and offers the security of download resuming that you simply don’t get with browser’s own download managers.

Speed Download is made by Yazsoft and retails at $25 (£16 aprox).