Download accelerator plus
By Bruce Stewart
Download Accelerator Plus speeds up your downloads by simultaneously retrieving multiple segments of a file from either the same or different servers (download Download Accelerator Plus 5.0 here). In other words, it makes the most of your bandwidth. And like most download managers, Download Accelerator Plus also can pause and resume downloads, recover from dropped Internet connections, and schedule future downloads. But unlike some of its competitors, Download Accelerator does so without flooding your desktop with pop-up advertising.By Bruce Stewart
Download Accelerator Plus speeds up your downloads by simultaneously retrieving multiple segments of a file from either the same or different servers (download Download Accelerator Plus 5.0 here). In other words, it makes the most of your bandwidth. And like most download managers, Download Accelerator Plus also can pause and resume downloads, recover from dropped Internet connections, and schedule future downloads. But unlike some of its competitors, Download Accelerator does so without flooding your desktop with pop-up advertising.
Download Accelerator Plus is simple to install–just download its executable installer file, double-click it, and follow the standard dialog boxes. But read the fine print carefully. Although Ad-aware does not recognize Download Accelerator Plus itself to be ad-serving software, you must agree to let a software program called SpeedBit monitor your surfing and gather personal information as part of the installation.
Integrates with Windows Explorer
Download Accelerator Plus speeds downloads by searching for mirror sites, additional download sites offering the same file, and retrieving files from the most responsive locations. It integrates with most of the leading browsers, including Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Opera, although its nifty browser interface, which runs entirely in your browser toolbar, works only in IE. Whenever you click a download link from your browser, Download Accelerator Plus jumps in and manages the process. It even can automatically disconnect your modem and shut down your computer after a download.
Unfortunately, Download Accelerator Plus’s file-organization options are meager compared to those of other download managers, such as GetRight 4.5d, and Download Accelerator offers users less overall customization.
Extras will cost you
Unlike other download managers, Download Accelerator Plus charges extra for some basic features. The main program window allows you to monitor the status of your downloads and access other features, including scheduling and searching. Sadly, the program interface itself displays ads in the shareware version–you’ll have to register Download Accelerator Plus for $29.95 to disable the ads or run the program as a minimized icon from the system tray.
Download Accelerator Plus offers a special fee-based service called AlwaysResume–odd, because most other download managers offer this service for free. Download Accelerator Plus warns that not all file servers have the ability to restart a download where it left off, and AlwaysResume guarantees that a file will restart whether or not the server supports that feature. Nonetheless, we never experienced a dropped connection that Download Accelerator Plus couldn’t recover from, even without AlwaysResume.
Performance improvement with large files
We tested Download Accelerator Plus using a 900MHz Pentium III system with 256MB of RAM, running Windows XP, and the results were promising. Files of 1MB or 2MB that were downloaded over a 56K dial-up modem yielded no speed improvements over Internet Explorer, but we did see improvement when downloading much larger files. Although Download Accelerator’s claim of increasing downloads up to 300 percent is inflated, we did notice improvements of up to several minutes when downloading large popular files, compared to Internet Explorer alone. Download Accelerator Plus even successfully completed a 100MB download overnight–something IE was not able to do without dropping the connection.
E-mail help and Web support
Technical support is available via e-mail (Download Accelerator gives priority to registered users) and via a Web-based help system. Unfortunately, these help pages aren’t easy to find from the Download Accelerator Plus site; the best way to get to them is by selecting Help from the program’s Help menu.
Download Accelerator Plus won’t make a huge difference in download speeds unless you download very large files over high-speed connections, but its scheduling and recovery features can save you time and frustration. Just don’t download the ad-serving component and skip the costly AlwaysResume feature.
GO zila free
By Bruce Stewart
GoZilla has a long history of bundling ad-serving software with its popular download manager (download GoZilla here). The latest version, 4.11, is no exception. Although GoZilla offers many useful features, including recovery from dropped connections and the ability to schedule future downloads, it’s simply too invasive. Until GoZilla changes its policies, we suggest GetRight or Download Accelerator, which improve your download performance but allow you to avoid ad-serving software.By Bruce Stewart
GoZilla has a long history of bundling ad-serving software with its popular download manager (download GoZilla here). The latest version, 4.11, is no exception. Although GoZilla offers many useful features, including recovery from dropped connections and the ability to schedule future downloads, it’s simply too invasive. Until GoZilla changes its policies, we suggest GetRight or Download Accelerator, which improve your download performance but allow you to avoid ad-serving software.
Easy installation…if you pardon the ads
GoZilla installs easily enough, although you may be getting more than you bargained for in the process. In addition to the download manager itself, GoZilla also installs several ad-serving applications, including Gator, Web3000, and Aureate, that track your surfing, collect personal information, and deliver targeted ads.
Unlike with GetRight, these invasive add-ons are mandatory. And worse, the GoZilla setup program asks permission to install even more adware, including eZula’s TopText iLookup and Clickguide. Then, unbelievably, GoZilla’s uninstaller leaves many of these tracking components running on your system even after you remove GoZilla itself. To completely rid your system of the ad-serving software, we recommend a program such as Lavasoft Ad-aware.
Functional interface, when it works
On our test system (a 900MHz Pentium III with 256MB of RAM, running Windows XP), we experienced some stability problems with GoZilla’s interface. All it took to lock up our test system was an attempt to close the program by right-clicking GoZilla’s system tray icon, then selecting Exit. We were unable to restore GoZilla to a working state without performing a complete reinstall.
The interface, a three-window, skinnable display, can monitor the status of your downloads, organize your downloaded files, and leech a download site for all the download files linked there. A separate status window shows a graphical representation of your download’s progress.
Plenty of features
Like most good download managers, GoZilla can recover from dropped connections and schedule future downloads; it even monitors files it already has downloaded for updates or changes. And GoZilla certainly speeds up downloads, especially if you have a broadband connection. It also will download multiple segments of a file simultaneously to speed the file transfer and search for mirror sites, automatically selecting the fastest download site. GoZilla provides a search engine for finding MP3s, pictures, and videos, but our test searches turned up little of value.
The GoZilla file manager offers an intuitive and capable way of organizing your downloads–better than the minimal choices found in Download Accelerator Plus. GoZilla also integrates with your favorite media player, such as Windows Media Player, so new music is automatically added to your playlists when downloaded. In addition, GoZilla works with your virus-detection software to automatically scan downloads.
Decent performance but poor tech support
In our speed tests, GoZilla performed on a par with other download managers. It downloaded files that exist on only one server as quickly as Internet Explorer, and it shaved minutes off larger downloads of popular files.
Technical support is available for all users, although registered users receive priority treatment. (Registration costs $29.95 and gives you the ability to turn off the ad-serving software.) Support is available only via e-mail, however, and the GoZilla Web site doesn’t offer much in the way of troubleshooting except for a poorly organized, hit-or-miss FAQ. Worse, GoZilla’s integrated help system consists of a link to an online FAQ with an option to tell a friend how much you love GoZilla.
We’d prefer to tell our friends about other less intrusive download managers such as GetRight and Download Accelerator Plus.
User reviews
Apple I tunes
Product summary
The good: Apple iTunes 8 includes new features such as crowd-sourced Genius playlists and sidebar, an album art Grid view, and a new visualizer engine. Fan-fave features such as Cover Flow, support for gapless audio playback, and automatic album art retrieval are still in the mix; as is its link to the iTunes Store, which offers movies, games, music, podcasts, and mobile applications.
The bad: iTunes 8 continues its unwelcome tradition of hogging RAM; the Genius sidebar feels slapped on when a full redesign would’ve been more than appreciated; the Genius features require an iTunes Store account; iTunes Store links can’t be toggled away; support is still spotty for podcasts and album art retrieval; movies still have a resolution of only 640×480 and cannot be burned to a watchable DVD.
The bottom line: Apple iTunes 8 is the industry standard for multimedia jukebox software and despite the need for a UI overhaul and some liposuction to remove the bloat, iTunes is a solid choice that most users will enjoy.
CNET editors’ review
- Reviewed on: 09/23/2008
- Released on: 09/09/2008
The latest version of Apple’s iTunes software (Version 8.0.0.35) expands the offerings for iPod, Apple TV, and iPhone users. The popular Windows and Mac jukebox application remains on top of the heap, but it’s not the only game in town for organizing and playing multimedia content on your computer.
The iTunes Store remains the highest-profile media store online, though, and iTunes software is the only way to access it. The Store includes feature-length movies, TV shows, games, a free University lecture podcast section titled iTunesU, a smattering of unrestricted (DRM-free) and more expensive music downloads called iTunes Plus, and the App Store offering third-party applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
The big new feature for iTunes 8 is Genius, which offers up playlist and iTunes Store recommendations based on user ratings. Despite the new feature and a few design tweaks, the essence of iTunes remains: it is an intuitive and (mostly) all-inclusive refueling point for iPods and iPhones as well as a media platform that aims to be part of your living room.
In this review, we’ll take a closer look at iTunes 8’s new features. For some background on the preexisting interface and feature set, check out the review of iTunes 7.
New features in iTunes 8
The new features in iTunes 8 are geared more toward iTunes Store account holders than anybody else, but Apple probably figures that includes the majority of iTunes users.
The most notable feature introduced in iTunes 8 are the Genius features: the Sidebar and the Playlist. Both require an iTunes Store account to function. The Genius Playlist sends your song-listening and song-rating data to Apple, supposedly anonymously, and Apple, in turn, converts the data into track recommendations. When you’re using the Genius playlist, start off by playing any song from your collection. Genius will build a playlist of tracks you have, based on what you and other listeners like. Although some tracks suggested seemed incongruous, since the playlist is created from music you own, there’s less of a chance for completely off-the-wall offerings.
The Genius sidebar offers album and artist recommendations from the iTunes Store using the same algorithms. We found these suggestions not only to be much more random, but it also suggested we buy albums that were already in our collection. It makes the offerings sound good, with headings such as “Top Songs You’re Missing” and “Top Albums,” but largely this feature was unimpressive because of its inaccuracies.
The Grid view makes for an interesting midway point between the plain and standard text-only layout, and the graphics-intensive Cover Flow. Double-click on an album in Grid view to bring up the tracks it contains, or hit the mouse-over Play button to start playing songs from it. It’s nice that the view works under Artists, Genre, and Composer, and has a slider to resize the album art. Go too large and it’ll pixelate, though.
The new visualizer mode, magnetosphere, was originally developed as an iTunes plug-in. It has a much stronger “flying-through-space” vibe. The old visualizer is still available, now called “classic,” for those of you who want to space out, old school. There’s also support for HD television shows.
We’ve also noticed that links from tracks to the iTunes Store are now a permanent feature in iTunes 8, and can’t be toggled out of sight.
iTunes 8’s interface
There are several ways to view and arrange your computer’s media library in iTunes 8, but one interface element remains constant: the source panel. Located on the far left side of iTunes, the vertical baby-blue strip known as the source panel includes separated sections for Library (Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, Audiobooks, Applications, Radio, Ringtones), Store, Devices (your iPods or iPhones), Shared Libraries, and Playlists. Selecting a source reveals all of its content in iTunes’ main viewing pane, which offers an exhaustive amount of ways to sort and view content.
View options
In addition to the plain-vanilla listing of your tracks and movies, you get two additional views. The new option is Grid view, which offers up clean, identically-sized square images of your album art. When you change the setting from Album art to Artist, iTunes chooses one cover to represent all the albums by one artist. Double-click on it to reveal the artist’s albums arranged in a column on the left, with your songs appearing in the standard spreadsheet-style layout in the center. The Cover Flow view displays a big window (that can be resized) for a virtual shelf of album art or movie covers, which reflect elegantly against the black background. You can scroll through and watch the graphics whiz by, or you can point and click one. Content associated with an album or a movie cover spills down below. As a new song plays, the appropriate cover will flip into place. Owners of slower systems will notice processor lags, though the gee-whiz visual appeal of this feature offers an extra dimension to the listening experience.
Integrated device management
Your iPod and iPhone settings are all managed within the iTunes interface. The main landing page displays both a graphic and vital stats of your iPod or iPhone, and lets you check off universal settings, such as “Only sync checked items.” Additionally, you can Update or Restore your iPod or iPhone from this Summary page. Content is managed by clicking tabs for specific content types such as Music, Movies, TV Shows, and Contacts. Finally, at the bottom of this window is a color-coded capacity meter that visually breaks down Audio, Video, Photo, Other, and Free Space. Competing applications such as MediaMonkey and Windows Media Player offer similar integrated management options; however, the use of a nested window rather than a new one or a drop-down one helps.
Download manager
This is a Source pane option that appears when you purchase content. Basically, it lists your selections along with a progress meter, and it’s very useful if you want to reorder the queue to get the song or movie you want quicker. You can also pause a single download or pause all downloads, and it’s a great way to keep track of interrupted downloads.
Automatic album art retrieval
With Apple’s emphasis on album artwork in both iTunes and the devices served by iTunes (iPhone, iPod, Apple TV), it can be jolting to come across a blank space representing an album with missing cover art. Apple makes it easy to automatically add artwork to you music collection by matching your music with album art from its iTunes Store catalog. The Get Album Artwork feature (found under the Advanced menu), can take several minutes to process your music library. Even with improvements made back in iTunes 7, iTunes 8 still struggles occasionally with automatic album art retrieval and could require manual intervention.
Gapless playback
Many music fanatics, especially those who like dance music, can use iTunes to enjoy their music without annoying gaps. When you first install and run iTunes 8, the application automatically analyzes your tracks for gapless playback. It’s not actually seamlessly bridging gaps; instead, it is figuring it out the best method for ungapping songs based on format and bit rate. If you turn Cross Fade off, all tracks will be played gaplessly. If not, you’ll have to multiselect all tracks in a gapless album, Get Info, then indicate that you want the selection to be part of a gapless album. So far, gapless playback works very well on both iTunes and the iPod. Nothing is more annoying than encountering gaps in “seamless” mixes.
Apple TV and iPhone integration
To further bolster its position as a touchstone in your digital life, iTunes 8 integrates both Apple TV and iPhone. If you own an Apple TV, you can stream iTunes library content from computers around your home. The iPhone is not only integrated into iTunes, it’s partially dependent on it. Key iPhone features such as syncing contacts and calendars, data backup, and music and video transfers all happen within iTunes, unless users pay for extended services such as Microsoft Exchange or MobileMe. iPhone users also have the option of creating personal ringtones for their phone using songs purchased from the iTunes Store. An iPhone/iPod Touch app called Remote also lets you use the touch-screen device as a remote control for iTunes, and works over a Wi-Fi network.
iTunes Store
What began as the iTunes’ Music store has blossomed into a multimedia juggernaut. Beyond its extensive selection of music and podcasts, Apple’s iTunes store offers movies, TV shows, university lectures, iPod games, and third-party applications developed for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Compared with the iTunes Store’s humbler music-only beginnings, the current store is more difficult to navigate than in the past. Those who make it past iTunes’ dizzying storefront are rewarded with attractive product-specific pages offering previews, summaries, customer reviews, and recommendations.
As of iTunes Version 7.6, you have the ability to rent some video content offered on the iTunes store, which can be viewed directly on your computer or transferred to some supported devices, such as the iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple TV, iPod Classic, or iPod Nano. Once a rented movie has been downloaded from the iTunes store, you have 30 days to begin watching the movie and 24 hours to complete it once playback has begun. Videos downloaded from the iTunes store have a general resolution of 640×480 (H.264), although some movies are letterboxed to appear as wide screen and a handful of high-definition television shows are now available.
Windows media player 11
- Reviewed on: 05/14/2006
- Released on: 05/17/2006
Editor’s note: A picture’s worth a thousand words. For a closer look at Windows Media Player 11 and Urge, check out our slide show.
Windows Media Player (WMP) 11–which debuted at CES earlier this year and features a visually appealing interface, as well as impressive features and performance–is Microsoft’s best jukebox to date. Not that it was a grand feat to improve upon a generally disappointing string of versions, including the somewhat awkward version 10. Still, if Microsoft is ever going to seriously challenge the iTunes music empire, the time is now. With the addition of MTV’s Urge, the jukebox’s resident music service, WMP 11 (available Wednesday as a free beta download) certainly seems poised for battle.
It’s not like Microsoft had trouble distributing any version of WMP; after all, the jukebox comes stock on any Windows system, and in fact, you can’t get rid of it. The trouble was the software was never particularly compelling, though it was pretty much essential for users of non-iPod MP3 players. With this beta launch, Microsoft has transformed its omnipresent media player from a state of default mediocrity into a powerful must-have application for music and media. Windows Media faithful will be pleasantly surprised upon installing the revamped WMP 11 for XP; Microsoft has put significant effort into creating a seamless digital media environment for the user, the software, the service, and portable devices.
WMP 11 for Windows XP is at its core the same jukebox you’ll experience for the upcoming (but tardy) Vista OS. It all begins with the interface: Microsoft product managers admitted that it needed to be much simpler, more visual, and more like iTunes. Rather than dumbing down the GUI, Microsoft has smartened it up with wise design decisions that open up the desktop without eliminating the powerful features within. For example, the playback controls (at the bottom) are now glossy and inviting, and they include repeat and shuffle options. Additionally, the back and forward navigation buttons (upper-left corner) ensure that you’ll never get lost. However, the revamped menu buttons have the most significant impact on the interface. Boiled down to five choices–Now Playing, Library, Rip, Bun, and Sync–each button has its own sub-button that opens up a slew of useful menu items. So when you activate the split menu for Rip, you’ll get options to adjust format, bit rate, and so on.
Another noticeable–and welcome–interface change is that WMP’s frustrating, ever-expanding left-hand nav tree has been simplified to include only music info by default, thus eliminating the long, scrolling list in the navigation. You can simply click the Library split button to get to the video or photo libraries, which have their own dedicated set of nav-pane options. The main browser window has also been radically altered: no more boring, anonymous text on a dark background. Instead, you get a colorful album-art-driven view of music, thumbnail views of photos, and screenshot thumbs of their video files, all on a light-colored background. This not only makes it easier to locate and manage files but also gives the player some much-needed personality.
We like details such as stacked albums, where groups of albums–based on genre, artist, year, and so on–are sitting on top of one another in a way that allows the user to quickly identify groups visually. Nobody likes missing album art, so we also appreciate WMP 11’s ability to track down images (as well as ID3-tag info) and automatically update your library using a new audio-fingerprinting technology that, like many other WMP tasks, takes place in the background.
Another impressive WMP 11 feature is the instant-search tool, which is both powerful and smart. Type in a search item, even part of a word, and you immediately get results broken down by artist, album, and so on. Additional keystrokes will narrow the results. WMP 11 has been engineered with the assumption that your collection of media files will number not only in the thousands but also in the millions, so you’re guaranteed to get rapid search results and no delay while browsing through thousands of files. We were downright impressed with WMP 11’s file-management performance. The tight integration of the Urge music service benefits greatly from this outstanding performance, as you’ll literally search a couple million tracks if you are an Urge subscriber. For more information on Urge, read our review.
Syncing, assembling playlists, and burning have all become much easier as well. The playlist pane (which can be hidden when not in use) on the right-hand side can be filled with songs, albums, and other files via drag and drop, and files can be simply arranged, saved, and edited. We hated WMP 10’s confusing sync/burn/playlist pane, which appeared on every view; with WMP 11, you get dedicated experiences that are as clear as any Apple-designed application.
A prime example is the burn bucket, which visually displays how much room you have remaining on a CD-R and demarcates subsequent CDs so that you can manage songs across multiple CDs. The same goes for syncing. Your device–we used both an iRiver Clix and a Creative Zen Vision:M–will appear as a large icon, and underneath, you’ll find a gas-gauge graphic that indicates how much room you have to fill up your player. You also have the option to automatically fill up a device to the max with the music of your choosing, whether they’re personal selections or based on smart groupings such as artists, genres, and so on. This ability to autofill your device in an intelligent fashion is a huge advantage when you’re part of a to-go subscription service, which gives you access to millions of tracks.
This attention to detail–or, rather, attention to the way people actually use their media player–is paramount to our newfound appreciation of WMP 11. Windows Media users finally have their iTunes.
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