The power of combining FreeZone with a download managerposted by Ashley Snowdon on 29 July 2010If you regularly need to download large files then combining FreeZone with a download manager is a powerful way to make the most of your satellite broadband. Although satellite broadband is invaluable for when traditional wired broadband is not available, the enormous cost of building, launching and maintaining satellites makes the cost of transferring data greater than that of traditional broadband. Consequently to enable everyone to receive a fair service there are download allowances and using larger amounts of data can be expensive. Fortunately, FreeZone gives you a way of getting access to higher volume data transfers without adversely affecting your monthly quotas or bank account. By choosing a package that includes FreeZone or adding it to your existing package for an additional small monthly fee, you can upload or download unlimited data between the hours of 11:00pm and 5:00am. Of course, not everyone wants to sit up all night downloading data! The smart way to do it is to use a Download Manager. This is a tool that 'captures' the links that will download files and can be configured to schedule that download for a later time. It also accelerates the download process by dividing large files up into smaller chunks, whilst downloading them simultaneously and if the download should fail part-way through, it has the ability to restart where it left off, meaning that no time or bandwidth is wasted. So for music or video downloads, software updates, or even downloading or uploading entire websites, this is the way to go. You don't even have to leave your computer on all night – if you choose to most download managers can shut it down when finished. Our recommended Download Manager for PC is the award winning Free Download Manager and is completely free. Here are some of the features:
We have a brief guide on configuring it to work with FreeZone below. If you're on a Mac there is the shareware (free to use but you must register to remove the purchase reminder on startup) iGetter. It is slightly different to use but the principles remain the same; it captures your downloads and can be scheduled to only download them at a specific time. Please note that we cannot provide support for iGetter so for assistance please contact the iGetter developers and community directly. Configuring Free Download Manager with FreeZoneSimply download, install, and it will look like this: To schedule your downloads for the FreeZone times of 11pm to 5am go to the menu and click on 'Options' and then 'Settings'. On the left hand side click on 'Downloads' and then 'Time Limit'. Make sure the settings match those in this screenshot: You can improve the performance of Free Download Manager by using its "Optimization Master"; this sets optimal parameters for Free Download Manager depending on the speed of your connection to the Internet. To open it go to the menu and click on 'Options' then 'Optimization Master'. In the Optimization Master dialog box choose the connection type. After you click OK, Free Download Manager will automatically adjust its parameters for better performance. We hope you see the power of combining FreeZone with a download manager. If you have any problems with Free Download Manager please refer to the support section on the Free Download Manager website. |
