Tell us what download manager you use!!
I use IDM works great with me and gives me slightly faster download speeds than flashget although i don't get great speeeds when downloading from megaupload and rapidshare etc....

i  don't use any    should I?

Yeah you should...
Lets me boost my average of 40 kbps to around 150-300 kbps :)

Should make yours go faster since im pretty sure were ever u live  NZ Broadband is worse lol

The speed boost really depends on a number of factors.  The main thing that boosts speeds are parallel connections and ability to download from multiple mirrors.

Parallel connections have a huge impact on shared internet - ie, downloading from the library.  It doesn't have so much of an effect at home, usually.  Also depends on the server - you can sometimes get big speed boosts on some with parallel connections.

Apart from parallel connections, there's really not much else a download manager can do to increase speed.  There may be a few tweaks here and there, but they should be hardly noticeable.


So in terms of speeds, most download managers should be about the same, provided they support parallel downloading, and mirror searching.  Flashget has a hack which allows up to 30 parallel connections per file, something other download managers don't offer (or don't offer for smaller files), and since I download on public computers, 30 parallel connections speeds things up a lot.

Otherwise, the download manager of choice would be other features, like resuming etc.
I prefer Flashget because of things like:

• Adding batches
  
• Download lists (you can write a program to generate a list of files to download with Flashget)
  
• Other general nice things, like preallocating a file before downloading, appropriately renaming files if they exist, ability to schedule etc etc

IDM would be the other popular download manager - I tried it out a long time ago, but found that it lacked features Flashget had.  It's nice though.  I might try it again sometime...

I don't use any.

Most download accelerators are full of spyware.

And as Zinga said the only real way that downloads are increased are through parallel connections.

So I just use Downthemall for batch downloads. Performs parallel connections, handles batch jobs beautifully, and is nothing more than a small Firefox plugin that can be used on Linux and Windows.

Orbit :D

I've also used Flashget for downloading mass files before, as it's quite good for being used in automated ways.
Eg, I had a setup at a library - when computer starts up, Flashget starts minimized to system tray, and automatically starts downloading.  I also wrote a little program to hide Flashget's systray icon, so basically, Flashget was invisible, and downloading mass files XD


Anyways, just tried IDM - hmm, perhaps I haven't tried this one before - is this it?


If so, it's horribly under-featured in comparison to Flashget - I mean, you can't even control the number of parallel connections..

Why didn't it work - like what errors and stuff?  Also, what version of Flashget?

It's up to you whether you want to try it again - IDM seems to work, so if you don't need much in a download manager, then meh...