Downloading woes

So, I'm trying to install a bunch of software on my new hard drive and I made a list of the useful stuff I had on my old drive which I got from the Internet, since I thought I might as well download the newest versions of software while I'm at it.

So one of the first things I downloaded was GetRight, a download manager I had registered ages back, in order to help me fetch stuff smarter. (Specifically, only downloading a couple of files at a time and queuing the rest in order not to clog up the pipe with each file only getting 0.2 KB/s, and the ability to restart downloads.)

However, some programs don't have a normal download link I can drag onto the GetRight drop target -- instead, they start downloading the file automatically. That way, I can save the file but GetRight isn't aware of it and can't throttle other downloads so the maximum number of simultaneous downloads stays within the limit I set. Also, I can't resume the file easily should the download break off.

A similar annoyance are programs that only download an installer which then fetches the rest. Why? What's the advantage? Previously, the only program I had seen which did that was MSIE, but Acrobat 5.1 also does this, and so does QuickTime. Grr. And it seems that it's usually the bigger files, which would benefit most from a download manager, have wacky alternative schemes...

Also, I wanted to download CuteFTP, which I had also registered, only to find that a new version is out for which my registration key is not valid. So I now have the choice of forking over $14.95 for an upgrade or trying to find a setup program for the older version.

Oh well. But I got the most annoying stuff out of the way and GetRight is now busy processing the download queue. (It crashed a while ago but seemed to restart the downloads where it left off when I re-started the program.)

Download Spree

Phew... when we came back from the broadcast of the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional, the downloads in the GetRight queue had finished.

Unfortunately, the connection had dropped sometime while we were away; even though NetPal had re-dialled the connection, the statistics on how many bytes had been transferred were lost. But before I left, the toll had been 178 MB, and by the time we got back, probably something around 250 MB or so -- that's the entire capacity of my first PC's hard drives (2x130 MB)! Wow :)

Now I only have to install all of those programs.