I typically use an older version of FlashGet as my download manager - it has all the features I need after all.  Unfortunately, it's not a free product, and the later versions are loaded with a fair bit of adware it seems.

Considering that the older version of FlashGet is, well, really quite old (close to 5 years old), I decided to go back and check out the Free Download Manager.  Haven't fully checked it out, but must say it's quite nice, and has a lot of nice features that FlashGet doesn't have.  Certainly would recommend you giving it a try, if you prefer to use free products.

Since I'm a bit of a negative person, I'll mention some things I'd like to see in it however (for positive remarks, search their homepage, lol):

• I liked how FlashGet displays all the request/response HTTP headers - helps resolve issues if you're on a proxied public connection.  Can also used to debug certain things too (I typically use Burp proxy to view connection headers, but Burp has issues with large files, so FlashGet solves this).  Also nice to see the status of each connection.
  For most people, I guess this isn't necessary however.
  
• Multiple proxy support.  It appears you can use different proxies for each file, but can't seem to use multiple proxies for a single file.  Not really a big deal I guess.
  
• Weird bug in the treelist on the left - click around where the "Filters" text is and you'll get a scrollbar from another listbox.  I suppose that this was meant to be hidden, and perhaps shown at some point, but the developers forgot to hide the thing.  Doesn't stop usability, so meh.
  
  
• Inability to manually adjust the download speed limit.  There's 3 profiles to control the speed (you can't add more), but I liked the easy access slider that FlashGet gives.  On the other hand, the profiles do give you control over some other things, such as number of connections.
  
• Importing multiple downloads - you don't get any settings prompt etc - they just get added straight away.  Would be nicer if they implemented something like their "Create batch download" function.  For example, if you want to download a bunch of files into a particular folder, in FlashGet you'd just import the list, select the folder in the options dialog that pops up, then chose to apply the settings to all files in the batch.
  

Might try out some other download managers and see what they're like.

flashget still works for me, IDM was a pain because i could never find a good crack, haven't tried other

might try that one later..

FDM also has an embedded video downloader thing.  Personally never use these however.

Crypt Load for the win   ;)

Tried it out, doesn't support the rtsp protocol (what I need).

I'm specifically looking for a download manager that can leech through rtsp from school (heh, streaming is gay. keeping is all the way). Seems like I'm going back to FlashGet (had support for that protocol more than 3 years ago).