Opera download limit

[MarcLister]

Morning all.

Just been downloading a file in Opera and I've got another waiting to go. I've only got a crappy 1Mb line here at Uni so I can't really download more than one file at a time if I want them to have decent download speeds.

Is there any way then to queue downloads in Opera, in effect to limit Opera to download just one file at a time? So I can add two or more downloads but Opera only downloads one at a time and then starts the next one and so on?

I've had a quick look in the Opera prefs and can't see anything.

[mycarsavw]

http://www.opera.com/support/search/...0&platform=all

That gives you some ideas.

[MarcLister]

Thanks. I shall peruse.

[dancingmatt]

Why not just download them both simultaneously anyway? Do you have to have one file before the other?

Your download speed may well be limited by the speed their server sends the file, not your line, so you might as well max it out I think. For example, I got broadband connected last Friday for the first time and wanted to see what speed line I had. Using speedtest.net I got 4Mb/s give or take a few hundred. But by downloading files from more than one site simultaneously and using NetMeter to monitor it, I was getting 8Mb/s at peak. If I downloaded any of the files individually, the speed never got faster than about 3Mb/s because that was all their server could give me.

So as long as your download is maxed, does it matter if the files are downloading at different rates to each other?

I don't have any evidence and it would be interesting to know if anyone has ever actually calculated this in a real-world scenario, but I can't imagine that downloading more than one file at a time does anything negative to your total time for downloading.

(Time to download A) + (Time to then download B afterwards)
is surely the same or almost exactly the same as
(Time to download A and B simultaneously, even if one or both are a bit slower).

Particularly if there's any possibility that either file will be downloaded at less than your maximum download speed - might as well put the spare capacity of your line to use!

(Does that make any sense?!)

[MarcLister]

Does that make any sense?!

Grudingly it does yes.

[Dreaming]

But I can see the sense in queing files. For example, you're downloading youtube videos or some rubbish, you want to be able to watch one, any one. if youw ait foar all of them it could be 10 minutes, or you could 1 minute for the first, then by the time thats finished playing 2nd is ready, and so on..

[MarcLister]

True. Didn't think of it like that. Thanks.

[Giraffe]

I use Opera a lot for downloads and sometimes have 4 or 5 files on the go at once. When I want a big file (I'm on 1.5Mbps, so big is only ~100MB) I use Star Downloader Free, simply because if there's a break or Opera has a promble I can resume the d/l.
This week I've got OpenOffice and a Linux distro. Learned the lesson when once I was about 250meg into a 300meg d/l and...!

[dancingmatt]

But I can see the sense in queing files. For example, you're downloading youtube videos or some rubbish, you want to be able to watch one, any one. if youw ait foar all of them it could be 10 minutes, or you could 1 minute for the first, then by the time thats finished playing 2nd is ready, and so on..

Yeah, course. Like I said, do you have to have one file before the other? If you do then don't hamper the speed of one file, but if it doesn't matter then bring it (all) on!

Ages ago there was a download manager called GetRight, don't know if that's still around. That could be used to queue files, and you could individually drag sliders to set priorities for files.

Max your network at all times, I say. Get stuff downloaded before you need it. I'm using Firefox and discovered this add-in, can't remember the name, which lets you drag a box over links with the right button, then when you let go it loads all the links in individual tabs in the background. So if you wanted to read lots of pages of a thread, go to the first one, then drag and select all the page 2,3,4,5 etc. These all start loading whilst you read the first one, then the next will be ready and waiting for you rather than you waiting for it.

[Dreaming]

Personally I'm enjoying cable, it downloads stuff ridiculously fast

eta: there is a browser plugin for firefox that preloads the webpages (not any pictures though I don't think) from every single link on the webpage. Seeing as an indvidual webpage without the pictures is only a matter of KBs I think, it does it quite quickly. Then when you're ready to go to the next page it's instant.

[MarcLister]

Personally I'm enjoying cable, it downloads stuff ridiculously fast

Bah humbug!

How fast is it? 20Mb? My Uni used to say it was a 512Kb line we had here but then part way through last year the download speeds jumped from 50-55Kb to consistently over 100, at say 110Kb. So I spose we now have a 1Mb line.

[Dreaming]

Nah it's just 4 but I get consistent 480kb/s all the time, there's no 'downtime' so to speak. So does about 30mb a minute

[MarcLister]

Lovely man, just lovely. I've got an 8mb line at home, well I only get 6.5Mb max. When that downloads something, boy does it download.