I just download everything to the desktop with whatever Firefox defaults with. Never had a problem and at my 5mb connection can't really see it happening any faster than it already is. So just what do they do?
They are good for people with crappy (IE Dial up) connections because they can easilly stop, and start downloads.
I use IE to download files now because for whatever reason if I try to download large files with firefox it crashes after a couple hours(I downloaded a 4 gig .iso file and it crashed in the middle. I was so pissed.)
They are good for downloading large files too because you can not have to worry about accidentally closing the download windows or something. Other then that you don't really need them if you have broadband.
Understand, thanks!
I believe download acceleration is just b.s., for acceleration you need to spend more money on a faster connection.
Even with broadband at King Kong sized download speeds DL managers are in some instances a life saver especially when downloading large files that you could loose due to a slow download server since most DL managers have a resume broken download feature. Some more nifty ones can download from multiple servers so that you can download from 2 to whatever amount of servers at one time, therefore if one server is slow it wouldn't impact your download that much (or not at all). Also some servers are so unreliable even downloading a 1mb or 2mb file from them can be a frustrating headache.
When I downloaded Ubuntu to just try out the Live CD I used a download manager.The one I use is Download Mage (commercial software), I suspect it's no longer in development because there hasn't been a new version in about five years although I don't regret buying a license especially since it works fine with Win9x all the way up to WinXP, if I ever get a WinVista system (hope not) I'll try it on that too with fingers crossed that it will work.