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Urbane.Tiger · 21. Feb 2009, 12:23 PM

I tried Giganet for nearly a week, my perception is that it is no faster or slower than FDM, both are limited by the speed of my link (ADSL2+, practical max is about 16Mbs) or more often than not by the performance of the download server.

The download, install and configuration of Giganet worked perfectly, I had no problems getting it working with Firefox (I already had the Flashgot extension), and it worked fine with my firewall software (Online Armor). I didn't use it directly from IE, but it worked when I downloaded stuff from MS from within an IE8 Tab in Firefox. So I've no doubt it would have worked directly from within IE8.

I initially used the same settings wrt to number of connections, number of concurrent downloads etc as I have in my FDM settings. I've experimented with these using a number of download managers over the past couple of years. I always end up with a max of 5 concurrent downloads, max of 60 connections, and no more than 20 connections per server as the optimal configuration

I saw no evidence that Giganet was even slightly faster than FDM, let alone "far faster" as is stated in the product review, yes I had gridnet enabled. I tweaked the settings variously, but I could induce no positive impact on performance, in some instances my tweaks had the negative impact I expected.

The main Giganet program has a "nicer" user interface than FDM

Giganet seems to lack FDM's ability to automatically associate download file types with specific download directories (i.e. in FDM I define that by default, exe's and msi's will go to downloads\software, and by default wmv's, avi's, movs and mpegs will go to downloads\movies, etc).

I don't recall seeing a scheduling feature in Giganet, I use FDM's scheduled downloads infrequently, but I would not want to lose it.

I couldn't get Giganet to work with my malware scanners (Antvir Premium and Ad_Aware Plus), but I also have intermittent problems with FDM in this area, so it may be an extraneous issue.

Giganet's progress window is significantly less informative than is FDM's.

I've gone back to FDM on the basis that Giganet offered no benefits and lacked some features found in FDM.

I did not use all of Giganet's features - no more than I use all of FDM's.

21. Feb 2009, 12:23 PM	#5 (permalink)
Urbane.Tiger Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 3	I tried Giganet for nearly a week, my perception is that it is no faster or slower than FDM, both are limited by the speed of my link (ADSL2+, practical max is about 16Mbs) or more often than not by the performance of the download server. The download, install and configuration of Giganet worked perfectly, I had no problems getting it working with Firefox (I already had the Flashgot extension), and it worked fine with my firewall software (Online Armor). I didn't use it directly from IE, but it worked when I downloaded stuff from MS from within an IE8 Tab in Firefox. So I've no doubt it would have worked directly from within IE8. I initially used the same settings wrt to number of connections, number of concurrent downloads etc as I have in my FDM settings. I've experimented with these using a number of download managers over the past couple of years. I always end up with a max of 5 concurrent downloads, max of 60 connections, and no more than 20 connections per server as the optimal configuration I saw no evidence that Giganet was even slightly faster than FDM, let alone "far faster" as is stated in the product review, yes I had gridnet enabled. I tweaked the settings variously, but I could induce no positive impact on performance, in some instances my tweaks had the negative impact I expected. The main Giganet program has a "nicer" user interface than FDM Giganet seems to lack FDM's ability to automatically associate download file types with specific download directories (i.e. in FDM I define that by default, exe's and msi's will go to downloads\software, and by default wmv's, avi's, movs and mpegs will go to downloads\movies, etc). I don't recall seeing a scheduling feature in Giganet, I use FDM's scheduled downloads infrequently, but I would not want to lose it. I couldn't get Giganet to work with my malware scanners (Antvir Premium and Ad_Aware Plus), but I also have intermittent problems with FDM in this area, so it may be an extraneous issue. Giganet's progress window is significantly less informative than is FDM's. I've gone back to FDM on the basis that Giganet offered no benefits and lacked some features found in FDM. I did not use all of Giganet's features - no more than I use all of FDM's.