Speed Download: Just Like in 1997, but Better

Remember the Internet ten years ago? Remember dial-up? Remember when you had to use a download manager to effectively get two files at the same time? Luckily, those days are over. For the most part, we’re all using modern browsers on high-speed internet, so we don’t need download managers anymore… right? Suffice it to say, there are still some out there, including Speed Download from YazSoft.

Speed Download really is a different kind of download manager. If you just wanted to download more than one file at a time, Safari or Firefox would do just fine if you’re on a decent connection. The advantage of Speed Download is, well, speed. Using multiple concurrent connections to the same server, your download rate can increase significantly. In my non-scientific tests, I’ve seen speed increases of up to four times what I got using just Safari.

Speed Download has some other interesting features, including FTP support and scheduled downloads. It can also organize different types of downloaded files into different folders on your hard drive based on file extension. Overall, the app has tons of settings for you to play around with, and once you get everything tweaked just right, you can even incorporate it directly into Safari to replace its built-in download manager.

If you have a need for speed when it comes to downloading big files, or you just need to manage a huge number of downloads without throttling your bandwidth, Speed Download is probably the best and easiest option available on OS X. Speed Download 4 is $25 from YazSoft. Get it here.