I realised that many visitors to my blog are looking for the English version of Xun Lei or Thunder 5, a China-based download manager that for some strange reasons does not with full English support. Though a language pack is available, many of the functions in Xun Lei are still essentially in Chinese. For those of you who do not understand Chinese or just don’t like the weird symbols that appear on your screen (due to the unavailability of language support within your OS), here are 5 kick-butt alternatives that you can use:
1. DownThemAll (dTa)
If you’re a Firefox user, then this extention or plugin is a must-have! DownThemAll lets you download all the links or images contained in a webpage and much more: you can refine your downloads by fully customizable criteria to get only what you really want. If you’re new to dTa, check out Lifehacker’s guide to supercharging your Firefox downloads with DownThemAll.
2. FlashGet
This is by far one of the most popular download manager available. It’s FREE and does its job very well. The latest version supports MHT (Multi-server Hyper-threading Transportation) that can increase your downloading speed 6 to 10 times faster. Like Xun Lei, it supports various protocols such as HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent, RTSP, etc. It’s also has multilingual supports, so no hassle when it comes to switching between languages.
3. Free Download Manager (FDM)
Free Download Manager is very similar with Flashget. It supports download acceleration, file splitting, and multiple transfer protocol support including BT. It supports seamless integration with Internet Explorer, Opera and Firefox. Of course, there some fake versions available on the net with uses the same name. So do check out the website for further info.
4. Orbit Downloader
This is a relatively new comer in the download manager war. It’s rather popular for web users who love to grab video/music/streaming media from Myspace, YouTube, Imeem, Pandora, Rapidshare, support RTMP. It supports most protocols but sadly BT is not one of them yet. The key feature to Orbit is that you can use it to download Rapidshare files. A detailed explanation on this is available here.
5. Gigaget
Oh yeah, the English brother of Xun Lei! Gigaget is in general the fastest for downloading files. It utilizes cutting-edge Net Grid technology to tap the unused resources of networked PCs and servers to greatly improve your download speed. However, it has not be properly developed and released like Xun Lei, causing some bugs to appear once in a while. Apart from that, it really gets its job done rapidly!
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