Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Open Source, P2P, Windows x64
Open Source Free Download Manager v3 adds tons of new features
by Lee Mathews Jan 7th 2009 at 2:00PM
Free Download Manager has released version 3 of their application, and the new version sports several new features that make it an excellent option handling all your download duties.
The new release can now manage torrents as well as download and convert Flash video from sites like YouTube. A remote control feature has also been added, enabling web management of your downloads (like uTorrent's WebUI). FDM also allows you to preview certain files and can download partial contents of zip files.
At about 18mb installed, it's not as lightweight as rolling uTorrent, DownThemAll, and any one of the YouTube downloaders out there, but it's an excellent all-in-one option for people that like to keep things simple.
A full list of features is available on the FDM web site. It's released under the GPL and you can choose between the full version or the lite, which lacks the torrent, video conversion, upload, and language plugins (though you can install them later if you choose).
There's no portable download on FDM's site, but Portable Freeware Collection has one available.
The new release can now manage torrents as well as download and convert Flash video from sites like YouTube. A remote control feature has also been added, enabling web management of your downloads (like uTorrent's WebUI). FDM also allows you to preview certain files and can download partial contents of zip files.
At about 18mb installed, it's not as lightweight as rolling uTorrent, DownThemAll, and any one of the YouTube downloaders out there, but it's an excellent all-in-one option for people that like to keep things simple.
A full list of features is available on the FDM web site. It's released under the GPL and you can choose between the full version or the lite, which lacks the torrent, video conversion, upload, and language plugins (though you can install them later if you choose).
There's no portable download on FDM's site, but Portable Freeware Collection has one available.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bufsabre said 2:36PM on 1-07-2009
i like fdm for iso images and other big files that take more than 5 minutes to download but you need to manually stop it from trying to download all files, i dont need to open another program to save a picture thats just stupid, they should make that an option you can opt out of on the installer
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HPearce said 5:12PM on 1-07-2009
Significantly still lacking is any support for 64-bit.
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Lee Mathews said 3:58PM on 1-07-2009
Native or not, it runs quite well on the Vista x64 machine I tested it on.
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Hany Hanna said 4:53PM on 1-07-2009
Free Download Manager is wonderful...I use the portable version. You have to install it first, and then, from the file menu, you can create a portable version, whether you get it from the their own website or from portable freeware.
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novettam said 6:09PM on 1-07-2009
I used fdm for a long time, it had nice features and i loved using it.
But then dta for Firefox came up and i stopped using it.
But now that i am using Chrome the most, i'm going to give it another try. Although it guess there is no integration with it still.
Well.. at least until Google gives us a download manager with better features or gives us extension support (=dta for chome), whichever comes first :D
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novettam said 6:18PM on 1-07-2009
Oh.. it actually does support chrome, eh.
WolvenSpectre said 6:54PM on 1-07-2009
Actually all the "New Features" (with the possible exception of the "Remote Control" because I use Vuze so I don't use FDM's Bittorrent functionality so I don't know) were there in the old version. Also as a previous user commented to get the portable version first you install it then use the feature under the files menu.
The real improvement is the now unified Settings and Options, which makes finding the settings you are looking to change many times easier.
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Brunofs said 6:27AM on 1-08-2009
I like grab++ function from OrbitDownloader, that allow you to download embedded flash contents, even flv videos that you cant see on the page source code ( you see the swf player that invokes the flv...)
Maybe this Flash feature is nice.
Another interesting feature:
Zip files partial download - Free Download Manager lets you download only the necessary part of a zip file.
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WilR said 7:21AM on 1-12-2009
I just use it for the zip-preview, it's such a time saver :)
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