Fresh Download

How familiar does this scenario sound? You, staring at the monitor, waiting for a download to finish. Moving your mouse cursor wildly across the screen or yelling at the computer to hurry up won't help you in any way. It's been tried before. What you can do is give the download a boost with Fresh Download.

The software is absolutely free and you can get it by downloading the 2 Mb package and running it. It features a standard installation wizard which requires no Internet related settings or anything. You can install Fresh Download like any other program.

The main part of the interface is a tasks list. You can add or remove one using the buttons on the toolbar. Apart from a few options, the top menus contain nothing you can't access from the toolbar.

Downloading something involves adding a new task. Once you've clicked on the Add button, a small window will show up where you can type or paste an URL. You can get it by right clicking the final download link from your browser and clicking the Copy link address option. The Add new URL window lets you specify a certain location where to save the downloaded file and type in a user name and a password should you need to download something from a website that requires signing in. After all this is done, you can either click the Download Now button so that the task will start immediately or just hit the Ok button and run the task later by selecting it from the list and clicking the Start button from the toolbar.

The process is faster than simply downloading from a browser. If you have more than one task running, the Speed button from the task bar lets you limit one or more selected processes. You can also find a Schedule feature on the toolbar that lets you make a task run by itself on a certain date or on a daily basis.