WinBITS

Based on the 2K/XP Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS), WinBITS is a powerful download manager that can run in the system's background, without affecting the user's activity on the computer.

The interface of the program is made of a standard window with an uncomplicated layout. You can create as many jobs as you want and load multiple URLs to download content from.

This can be done by dragging and dropping links in the workspace, by typing in a URL (with a username and password, if they are necessary) or by loading a plain text document with multiple links.

You can prioritize tasks, save all files to a user-defined directory or select the location for each URL, make jobs start immediately after adding them to the list, as well as suspend them.

The job queue shows the name, status, size, current transferred size, progress and priority for each item. Moreover, you can view job details and modify their properties. Plenty of other configuration settings are available through the Options screen.

For example, you can make WinBITS minimize to the system tray area and start minimized, enable the automatic catch of Clipboard URLs and filter the file types, alter the default save file path, as well as enable tray notifications and sound alerts.

The simple-to-use application runs on a low amount of CPU and system memory and it doesn't slow down the Internet connection. It has a good response time and contains a help file for inexperienced users. On the other hand, WinBITS does not excel when it comes to the downloading speed, but that's probably because it focuses on maintaining the online connection speed within normal levels. WinBITS is a pretty good choice for a straightforward download manager.