For your average user, Safari’s download manager is probably enough. But it’s, well, a little thin on features. Sure you can pause downloads, but yyou can’t queue them. You can’t download multiple items as one file. You can’t schedule downloads either. Speed Download can, however, and then some. If you’re a power user, Speed Download’s advanced feature set is worth checking out.

Speed Download may be a little daunting to your grandmother. There is a ton of features. Fortunately, Yazsoft was able to take all these features and make an interface that is actually quite usable. The developers avoid the chaotic mess that goes along with large feature sets in some applications.

One of Yazsoft’s claims is that Speed Download will increase your file download speed. The way it does this, according to the developers, is by making multiple connections to a server. So, how does Yazsoft’s claim hold up? I put it to the test. I downloaded the Virtual PC 7.0.2 update seven times using Safari and seven times using Speed Download. To calculate the average, I excluded the best and worst score for each to help factor out network speed fluctuations (on a night where my connection was less-than-ideal). Here are the scores:

At least according to our tests, Speed Download beat Safari by an average of 20 seconds. While your mileage may vary, there seems to be truth to Yazsoft’s claim.

Faster downloads are not the only reason to use Speed Download; Speed Download also comes with a number of features to aid in managing downloads. Speed Download includes a browser plugin that will automatically pass downloads from your browser to Speed Download. Unlike previous versions which turned on the plugin whether you wanted it or not (you can also disable it for certain domains in Safari, Speed Download 3 allows you to choose whether or not you want to use it. Speed Download features the standard feature set: pausible downloads, post processing options, and queueing, but it also includes a few features not found in other download utilities: iTunes integration and network file transfer. iTunes integration allows Speed Download to automatically add downloaded audio files to your iTunes Library. A nice touch. But one onf the big ticket features is the ability to transfer files via Rendezvous/Bonjour/whatever you want to call it.

Bonjour file transfer is pretty easy. Connect two Macs running Speed Download together and upload and download files between the two. This would work on any network and it works farily well. For security reasons, you must enter the users name and password. Unfortunately, it only works for user accouints with Speed Download currently running, and it won’t tell you when a user account you try to connect to isn’t runnong Speed Download. This is a little annoying because you may end up entering the username and password in over and over without any explaination as to why the username and password you entered is being rejected.

That annoyannce is just about the only problem I encountered when using Speed Download. Yazsoft calls Speed Download 3 “The ultimate Mac OS X download manager” and Speed Download 3.0.10 definitely lives up to the hype. It has a large number of features (which a review such as this one can’t completely cover), which makes it very flexible for the power-user downloader. Download it and give it a try today.