| User review:
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Got this as a free promo from SharewareOnSale. I think it is useful to have a number of downloader options in your toolkit, and I would rate this program higher if / when the developer corrected certain issues. For me, this replaced IDM, which I tossed due to some now dimly recalled security or privacy issues. That is most likely not the case with Ant DM, but it is rather intrusive in other ways. It has a pronounced tendency to "butt in", offering its download services constantly, whether you wanted its intercession or not. This is apt to *clash* with your browser downloads, and particularly if you have any of a number of various downloader extensions -- some of which may be rather specialized, such as video downloaders. (I've been very partial to DownThemAll, for FireFox.) In an attempt to tame this program, rendering it more "On Demand" only, I had to disable its automatic activation at Windows startup, and set up a ton of file or website *exclusions*. Even then, some of these are often ignored by Ant DM ! Despite my checking the settings box for "Never Check for Updates" (because an update would very likely invalidate the freebie license), the program frequently checks for updates. This sort of thing ought to be fixed.
No indication of d/l problems like those another reviewer mentioned . . . but I'm using a good cable service, not dialup.
After a fair amount of usage, my impression is that it is a rather capable download manager, with a full roster of User Preference settings. Whether it has any capacity to locate and grab files that don't particularly want to be found -- in cases where you might otherwise reach for programs like Tubedigger, VideoGet, or RTMPDumpHelper -- I couldn't say at this time. |
