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| Do you download a lot of programs from the Net? Then you should check out our roundup of the Web's best free FTP programs below. "FTP" stands for File Transfer Protocol. Simply put, it is a way to copy files to and from FTP servers elsewhere on a network. And it's the most common method for downloading files onto your computer. Some people do all their downloading through their browsers. Indeed, for casual downloaders, your browser may be all the software you need. But if you download a lot of files, you should check out one of the FTP programs we list below. They provide a much superior method for downloading software. They provide many handy features that can make your downloading time much more efficient. For example, some of these programs let you "tag" various files that you'd like to download while you're surfing. After you've finished a surfing session, they'll automatically go out and retrieve the files for you and then shut down your connection. Other programs will automatically reconnect and resume a failed download for you. (There are few things more annoying than losing your connection after you've downloaded 19 megabytes of a 20 meg file!) Send us E-mail if you'd like to submit a freebie for us to consider for inclusion on The Free Site. |
 | Check out the loads of great free goodies at The Freebie Directory! |
Net Vampire, version 3.3 - If you surf around a lot and spot files here and there that you'd like to download, then you need this ad-supported free program. Just drop-and-drop the URLs to Net Vampire and you can do all your downloading in one batch. Net Vampire resumes broken connections and restarts downloads. It's also specially designed to deal successfully with noisy servers and unreliable links. It also offers features such as a built-in search engine, true site testing and support for many proxy types. New version adds more features, including an on-the-fly ZIP viewer and a multi-lingual user interface, which supports 14 languages.
Grafula - An add-on to the excellent free download manager Net Vampire, Grafula is a handy freeware graphics utility that offers an online picture download manager and image viewer. Helpful if you need to download a large number of images from an entire Web site, a single page (or a specified depth). Allows you to preview images as thumbnails. Handles loads of formats, including JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP and TIFF. Requires Internet Explorer, version 4 or more recent. (For Windows 98/95/NT).
- FTP Commander - A basic, easy-to-use freeware FTP client. Offers all the functions of the Web's most popular FTP client, WS_FTP, except that this is unconditionally free. You can delete, rename and copy files, as well as create and delete directories on the FTP server.
- Monica - (No longer free: Monica recently changed status from freeware to shareware). We've had a number of requests from visitors for a good FTP and HTTP download client for the Mac. Monica fits the bill nicely. Monica lets you easily set up a download queue. Once you've placed some files in the queue you may manually start each download at a time convenient to you. Monica restarts incomplete downloads if the server times out. (For Macs). 800 kilobytes.
- WS_FTP - The most widely-used FTP client on the Net. There's nothing fancy about WS_FTP, but it gets the job done and has every feature you need for basic uploads and downloads. Free for home and academic uses.
- Go!Zilla - Here's a superb, free, advertising-supported download manager utility. Go!Zilla allows you to recover from download errors and manage and categorize files to download later (and get those files from the most responsive site.) Go!Zilla will even resume a failed download. Here's a screen shot. 1.3 megabytes. (For Windows 98/95).
- Dipstick
- If you download a lot of files (like us) you really need
this essential freeware utility. Among other things, Dipstick will query various mirror
sites and tell you which will give you the fastest download. Dipstick is now also available as an Active X control. Note: Dipstick has been recently updated to fix
several bugs including a tendency to crash when trying to clean up URL lists.
- LeechFTP - There's a lot of good freeware out there for every purpose. But quality free FTP clients are rare. LeechFTP fills the void with a strong package offering many bells & whistles. This free multi-threaded Windows FTP client can do HTTP file downloads, as well. Besides English, other language versions are available, including German, Czech and Chinese
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