Star Downloader Free

Back in the day, when I could download and install any and all nice and interesting software I could come across, I had the same frustrations of 0.5 about using DAP as a download manager/accelerator. The thing that did it for me was the flashing ads. Yuk. [I didn't get to version 7 even]. So I did what I do [or used to do]. Googled my head off for some app to do this. Star Downloader was the easy winner on this one.

This is what I've learnt from this and similar experiences. If it says shareware or 15 day trial or something, I don't give it a second look. [I don't give anything commercial a first look even]. There's nothing as bad as getting used to a piece of software just for it to expire on you. Save yourself the pain. [I tried that stuff of saving dumps of the registry and harddisk before the install, but it's just too much pain]

There are too many useful free apps out there for you to struggle with anything else. By free here I mean free and open source software [otherwise known as FOSS]. Take HTTrack for instance. After my initial experiences with WebStripper, I figured there must be a FOSS alternative; and there was. I'm not a user so I don't care about fancy, beautiful looking, mostly bloated apps. I want a small thing that works. And HTTrack even has a firefox extension that uses its engine, SpiderZilla, so you don't even need to install the fully fledged app.

For a programmer to be confined to MSFT tools and applications, as I have for all practical purposes, is just tragic. There was a time I used to visit sourceforge a lot, just to see what guys are up to. If there's one good thing FOSS has done for software, is that it has shaken up the big boys a bit and forced them to improve their software and not just collect licence fees. It's also provided lots of useful tools for developers.

I won't deny that I don't like MSFT, but I'm not dogmatic in my loathing. Word is a good word processor. .NET is just java and c++ a couple of years late. It's a good thing, but there's no need for any hype about something that has been around for ages.

Next time you need an app, check out your FOSS alternatives. Why settle for less.