Matthew J Rippon

July 21, 2008

Free Download Manager (FDM) is, as its name suggests, a freeware application that manages downloads of programs, and video and audio files. It is considerably faster than the usual saving to disk procedure in Windows XP using Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.

According to its Help file, "Free Download Manager splits files into several sections and downloads them simultaneously, allowing you to use any type of connection at the maximum available speed." You can download from websites using HTTP or from FTP servers.

I downloaded a 100MB video using FDM which took 12 minutes.

I then downloaded the same file without FDM and the process took 23 minutes.

Another advantage is that if a connection breaks, which is rare these days but still possible, FDM will complete the download once the download is re-started rather than having to start from scratch.

First, you need to choose your connection speed ranging from 14.4K dial-up modems to a Local Area Network connection. You do this when the program is first run.

When you go to a website and click the download link, FDM automatically initializes which then takes over the download process. FDM will not work if you right click then "save as." The download status is viewable in the log pane which is useful for potential troubleshooting. The filters show files that have been downloaded, files being downloaded, and those that failed for some reason.

All downloads go into the Downloads directory although you can set your own directory.

You can schedule downloads. For example, if I wanted to schedule downloading a huge file, it could happen at 3am and be ready when I awake.

Once you have downloaded a video or audio file you can convert its format in the Media preview / content section. For example, I just downloaded a .wmv file (Windows Media) and converted it into .mpg (MPEG). I also decided the quality of the conversion which ranged from very low to very high.

You can download an entire website using the HTML Spider. This is a great way of having reading material when you know that later you might not have an Internet connection. To prevent unmanageability, you specify the number of links deep required. I have never had consistent results with the HTML Spider: sometimes most, but not all of the website files, are downloaded.

Another advantage is that FDM retains a record of downloads. You can check to see exactly what was downloaded in the past.