Get GetRight and Manage your Downloads! (Getright)

Member Name: Deru

Product:	Getright
Date:	12/12/07 (124 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lets you Resume and Accelerate downloads, Saves time, Lots of features

Disadvantages: Shareware, so not free

GET WHAT?
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GetRight is a piece of software classed as a download manager. "What's a download manager?" some of you are probably thinking! It's a small program that manages your downloads by adding them to a queue and downloading them one or several at a time. When there are many files to be downloaded, it is not good to start the downloads all at the same time as the bandwidth is distributed between the files to be downloaded so each file would download slower and be more prone to stalling and timing out. Therefore, it makes sense to download one at a time or in small batches and then only starting new downloads once earlier ones have completed.


INSTALLATION
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Installation is simple! Much like most other Windows programs, there's an installation wizard with step-by-step instructions (Click Next, Next, Next, OK, etc.). At the end of the installation, you will be given the option of choosing Advanced/Full mode or Basic mode interface. Using Basic hides all the advanced options to make it 'friendlier' to those who don't know much about computers. You can switch between the two. Basic mode provides a Wizard (step-by-step) configuration whereas Full mode provides all the section of settings in a less linear manner. You select the option from a menu (like in Windows Explorer), and the settings show up in the big area. Unfortunately, there's no native version for the MAC or Linux.


WHAT CAN IT DO?
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It stores a list of files you want to download and their addresses and then download them when you choose to. So let us say you had 100 files to download from a particular or various websites. They can be anything from small audio files like MIDI, to mp3s, pictures, programs to zip files to por....errr...other stuff. It's not really practical to start downloading all of them at once if you are using a dialup or even a broadband connection so you would download them one at a time (or a couple at a time). You would have to wait for one to finish before starting the next one but this is time consuming. On occasions when I have, let's say 100 files to download, especially with bigger files, the bandwidth would be spread between them. I would want earlier files, (i.e. video1.avi) to finish downloading first so I can watch it, then video2.avi, etc. Downloading all at once would usually mean I have to wait for all of them to finish roughly all at once and starting so many would drain resources and probably crash Windows and cause most / all the downloads to timeout.

If regular downloads drop down to 0Kbs (Kilobytes per second (The units the speed is measured in)), then they're likely to time out and you'll have to restart the download from the beginning, and if the files you want to download are from different pages or different websites, then you may end up not being able to re-locate some of them. This happens on broadband as well as dial up.

Ever wanted to download a file but your Internet connection got cut off, and you had to start your download again? A minor annoyances with small files but often, files are a bit larger and if you're on a dial up connection, it can be frustrating to start from scratch (especially if it happens more than once!). GetRight allows you to 'resume' downloads so if you get disconnected from the Internet or your computer crashes, you can resume and continue to download the file from where you left off. If you need to reboot your computer in the middle of a download, you have the option to pause your download(s) to reboot, and after rebooting, you can resume downloading. Some servers do not support resuming but I find that 90% do. GetRight also acts as a download accelerator, which means downloading files can be quicker with GetRight and I find this to be true on many occasions. This is true when downloading from servers with more bandwidth available. Some servers are busy to the point where you will get slow speeds even with acceleration but in general, I do find files download faster with GetRight when I turn on the acceleration compared to downloading using Internet Explorer or Firefox (which has its own download manager). GetRight does it by making multiple connections to servers. I used to use it when I had dial up but now use it with my broadband because I often have many separate files to download (e.g. DivX videos) and because I don't always get the maximum speed without GetRight to accelerate the downloads.

CUSTOMISING GETRIGHT
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After installing GetRight, you can customize it. The download windows showing the progress of your download can be 'skinned', meaning you can apply a skin to change the look of this box. Skins can be downloaded free of charge from the GetRight site. I really like these as it makes things more interesting.

The buttons in the GetRight main window can be changed. You can set up sounds for each event (i.e. when a download completes, it can play a particular WAV file that you want). Sounds can also be downloaded from the GetRight site but you can use your own if you have any or want to find some interesting ones.

You can change the icons that are displayed in the System Tray. I don't like the default icons so often find myself changing that if I have to re-install GetRight for whatever reason.


USING GETRIGHT
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The user interface (buttons and stuff) looks quite nice. To use it, if you set up GetRight with 'click-monitoring', it'll allow GetRight to communicate with your web browser, and clicking on links that link to files will bring up a GetRight save dialog box (kind of like the Windows ones) for you to give the file a name. The default name is the name of the file you are downloading but you can change it. Once you hit 'Save', GetRight will start downloading (unless you set it up to not start) and you can keep adding files to your list.

You can also add files to the list by dragging and dropping links into the Download Drop-Target, adding the URL, or dragging, dropping into the main GetRight window, as well as importing from a list of URLs in a file, in a format, that GetRight can read.

As well as importing, you can export the selected items into a file so you can back up the list of files you want to download. To start downloading if not already, you can select the file(s) you want to start downloading, then click on the 'Resume' button. That's like a blue 'Play' button, right click on them then click 'Resume' or click on the 'Automatic Downloading' button. Automatic downloading will start downloads one at a time or two at a time, etc depending on your settings. It will start a new download from your list once one is completed.

While downloading, you will see a GetRight download window. This will tell you the progress of the download in a percentage and in a progress bar, and the download speed. It can also show a graph of the speed. As mentioned before, you can change the look of this window by downloading and applying a 'skin'. That's it really. The files will be on your Hard Drive where you specified ready for use.

Due to the popularity of BitTorrent (peer to peer / P2P downloads), newer versions of GetRight can download torrent files. Unfortunately, I find this feature as useful as a solar powered torch as it just doesn't work! On attempting to download a torrent file (e.g. a movie) using GetRight, the download is added to the queue but I've found that every single time, it says there's no peers to download from, despite the torrent having a number of 'seeds' (people sharing the file) available. On switching back to my usual torrent software, the download starts straight away, which to me says that the feature in GetRight hasn't been perfected.


BUYING GETRIGHT
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It's Shareware so free to download (with limited features, nag-screens, and Buy Now buttons here and there) and try but you're supposed to buy it after installing it for 30 days. Once you've reached the end of the 30 day trial period, it'll give you constant reminders to buy the program and it'll tell you how much you downloaded using GetRight and how much time it saved you from not having to restart downloads.

It costs $25 (USD), which is roughly £12, (depending on exchange rate) but you can choose to contribute more. There is also GetRight Pro, which has more features. You can also purchase multiple licenses if you want to use it on all computers at your workplace, with discounts depending on quantity of licenses.

Once you've paid, they'll send you a registration key via email. The key is a combination of letters and number, which you enter into the registration key box in the program. It'll then thank you for the purchase, and will no longer show you reminders.


OTHER FEATURES
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Download Drop Target - This is where you can drag and drop links to add downloads to your download list. This thing has evolved from a rectangular box with a small animation of their logo to a circular thing, which I don't think looks as nice but it works. You can set this to semi-transparent, have it 'always on top', and have it smaller. I use this when there's a lot of files on a web page I want to download. I just drag and drop them into the GetRight Drop Target to queue them for download.

GetRight Browser - Lets you browse folders of websites so you can download the files. This is really useful if there's lots of files on a web page, too many to even drag and drop into the Download Drop Target. You can view the whole folder where a web page is and then select the files you want and then add them for download. This doesn't work on all sites but does for most unprotected ones.

Turn-off Computer When Done - I won't insult you lot by explaining this one.

Hang Up When Done - Disconnects you from the Internet when done downloading. This is either for the current file being downloaded or whole list of files, depending on whether you have Automatic Downloading on. This is for dialup users and broadband users that need to 'log in'.

Re-Dial if Disconnected - Self explanatory. Only for users using a dialup connection though but very handy since dial up is prone to disconnects.

Speed Limit - Tells GetRight not to download faster than the speed limit. This is so you can save a bit of bandwidth to do other things since GetRight can accelerate downloads to use as much of your bandwidth as the website you're downloading from allows.

Download Scheduling - This starts downloads when you want to. Great feature to have if you don't want to start using GetRight downloads because of a current non-GetRight download.


HELP
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The program has a helpful help file with screen captures. Everything labelled, everything explained. More information can be found on their website under Support.


BAD POINTS
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One bad point is that it's not free. Another point is that not all downloads are resume-able. Some servers simply do not support it. There are sites with 'anti-leech' measures where they do not allow you to take their links, therefore GetRIght can't pick these up either. Downloads from peer to peer and other technologies are also out of the question.

Accelerating downloads can also be bad for servers that may only have enough room for a certain number of connections at a time, as segmented downloads means creating more connections to download a file at an accelerated speed.

Lastly, the torrent feature is useless but luckily, it you can set GetRight to not be the default handler for torrent files.


WHY CHOOSE GETRIGHT?
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There are many other download managers about but I like GetRight best thanks to the abundant of features. Stuff like the speed limit, download scheduling, segmented download (acceleration), drop target, etc makes it so worth the money..



WHERE DO I GET IT?
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www.getright.com

You can also download it from other sites like zdnet, cnet, tucows, etc that provide a database of freeware and shareware programs.


WORTH HAVING?
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Definitely! Saves time when download lots of stuff at a time and is just a lot more convenient. Not just that, resumes downloads, and accelerates them when possible, and a lot more! It's my favourite download manager. The only one I've found to be worth paying for. Saying that, it may be more useful to heavy Internet users whom download a lot of multiple files and/or larger files via direct downloads for both dial up and broadband users. Essential for dial up but incredibily useful for broadband users.

Thanks for reading!

Summary: The Best Download Manager

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