14 DAY TRIAL // Download accelerators have been the companions of many users through the low-speed era of the Internet. But even today, spending as little time as possible on a download is a desirable achievement. Download Accelerator Plus (DAP) is a well-known tool for experienced users, designed to cut on those download times by enabling multiple connections to retrieve a single file.
The regular price of the application is $39.95, but it is currently on sale, at $24.95. If this is too much money for you to spend in one place or if you want to test DAP’s abilities before making the purchase there is also a free version, which comes with some limitations, though.
First of all it is crawling with advertisements, either by displaying banners in the interface or by pushing in third party elements you do not need for faster downloads. Second, the potential of some of the functions has been trimmed down a bit. As such the freebie won’t be able to use more than five connections for a download and it does not sport plenty of the advantages included in the full product.
Installation of the application requires a bit of attention if you do not want third party elements on the system at the end of the operation. But with a little care you’ll get to the finish with only DAP installed.
Immediately after installation we applied the activation code so we could take a look at the full product (DAP Premium), but we could not miss the banners inserted in the main application window as well as other screens.
On the other hand, Download Accelerator Plus Premium shows much less advertisement, but it does not eliminate it completely. The app has triple functionality as besides fulfilling its primary purpose it can also be used for web browsing and as a FTP manager.
Looks are not impressive but the advantage in the case of DAP is that it offers a simple layout that does not require too much effort to understand. All the options are present in the top part of the screen and beneath them there are the windows for managing the items.
During installation of the app you will be asked if you want its shortcuts on the desktop. One of them is used to launch the program while the other offers quick access to the storage folder. By default, all downloads go into a single folder, but the software can automatically sort them into categories (either the default ones or user defined) as they get on the hard disk.
Needless to say that managing the downloads includes pausing and resuming the job. DAP can handle up to 20 jobs at the same time, which is pretty fair, additional jobs being queued automatically.
Although the free version can work with only 5 connections, the application proved to be a better solution than what you benefit in a browser such as Internet Explorer or Google Chrome.
During our tests DAP finished a 1.13GB download first competing the aforementioned browsers. It took 18’37’’ for Chrome to complete the job while IE9 needed 17’57’’ to do it, verification of the file excluded; adding the time it took for the file check IE clocked in at 18’25’’. DAP’s time to get the job done was 14’55’’, virus check included.
However, the download accelerator supports 10 connection in the full product, which means that it can conclude the downloads faster. Having it rigged to use the maximum number of connections supported it produced even a lower wait time: 14’16’’, verification included.
A four minute difference is proof enough that DAP is faster as getting the files on your hard disk than popular web browsers like Google Chrome and Internet Explorer. And, to make things easier on you can use it instead of the default solutions in the web browsers.
The product integrates best with Internet Explorer as users can select between a DAP or the solution in Microsoft’s product whenever a download starts. For users of Firefox or Google Chrome you have to appeal to the right click menu of the download link to complete the task with Download Accelerator Plus.
The moment DAP takes over the download task the set of options you have at your disposal is not limited to defining the storage location; you get to pick whether the download should be initiated on the spot or schedule it for a specific time (this can be done from the configuration panel of the application). Additionally, there are multiple acceleration modes available, each influencing the duration of the job.
Apart from speeding up the downloads and categorizing them, DAP puts at your disposal other options, meant to protect the downloaded items. Thus, you can hide the items in the list by making them private. This, however, affects only the elements in the application’s window as accessing their storage location renders them completely visible.
When it comes to removing the downloaded items the application can delete the items from the disk as you would normally do, or it can shred them to make sure that they cannot be recovered. In our case the files shredded with DAP were indeed lost and could not be retrieved through using software recovery means. The app did the job well, although we have no hint on the wipe algorithm used.
Shredding the physical item from the hard disk does not erase all evidence of it being stored on your computer, though. The history log the application keeps for each download is a tell of the file’s presence on your computer at one point. The History Manager can display the log by day, week or month and the options at hand allow you to restart a download or copy the download link to clipboard.
Browsing the Internet with DAP is not one of the best experiences. The basic web browser available in the application makes available only the necessary options: moving back and forth, refreshing and skipping to the home page set in Internet Explorer.
Just like in the case of web browsing, FTP support is limited to the basic tasks. All you can do is establish an FTP connection and retrieve the desired files. However, our experience with this tool was a brief one as we were unable to connect to FTP addresses. The error we’d get would be “The PORT command failed”.
You have total control over the tasks; as such, you can start and resume them as well as program their start to occur at a specific time, through the scheduler. You can preview zipped files and extract them directly. Total integration in browsers like Firefox and Google Chrome so that DAP takes over the download jobs would be a very comfortable approach for the user. Advertisement banners are still present in the interface of the paid product. Also, we could not get the FTP browser working. If you’re looking to trim down wait times on large downloads then putting your money into DAP is a wise choice that also gets rid of most of the banners included in the free version.
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