Before we start, let me get something straight first: I hate Rapidshare. It’s annoying how they always try to get to your wallet – “upgrade to our premium account, or else!” and ‘else’ here means: “you’ll have to put up with limited and slower uploads and downloads, time restraints, and other annoyances.”
But what I hate most about this file sharing service is that – being one of the pioneers in the file sharing business – almost everybody uses Rapidshare and you can find almost everything there. So we just have to grit our teeth and accept it as it is.
Or do we?
I’ve searched the web and actually found quite a few Rapidshare download managers which can overcome Rapidshare limitations (or at least some of the limitations) but not each and every one of them can be used ‘conveniently’ – some of them are not in English, some others are spyware, some can’t be downloaded.
So, here are only three slightly better-than-the-others choices which will make your ‘rapidsharing’ life easier. All for Windows only unfortunately. I wasn’t lucky enough to find anything for other OS’s. But no worries, you can still check out cool Rapidshare tools that we covered earlier.
Let’s assume that you already have the Rapidshare location of the file you want to download (if not, look at this Rapidshare search engine to give you a headstart). Therefore all that is left to do is to download the file conveniently with one of these tools:
1. RapGet
The first recommended app is RapGet. This is a small standalone Rapidshare download client – only around 200KB – which can help you download multiple files from Rapidshare if you have the Premium Account. But if you use the free account, it will download one file at a time, and automatically wait a specified period of time before attempting to download your next file. So just enter all your Rapidshare URL’s and it will download them all for you one at a time.
Besides that, RapGet also supports 60 other file hosting services such as MegaUpload, Box.net and others which work similar to Rapidshare. All you need to do is enter your file hosting account login information.
2. RapidHarvest
If you are longing for a Rapidshare download manager with scripting ability, then maybe you’ve just found the solution.
You can add multiple links to be downloaded by using menu File –> Import –> From Text. This feature is very convenient for those who use Rapidshare regularly, as many of the large downloads are chunked into smaller files.
3. Rapidme
Rapidme is an all-in-one Rapidshare tool. You can share your links which you submitted on Rapidshare, Megaupload.com, and Sendfile.com. Rapidme also lets you search, rate and add links.
But even though Rapidme has no spyware, no adware, and is 100% free to use; it’s ad supported. It’ll show an advertising banner on the lower part of the window. So it’s up to you whether that bothers you or not.
If you know any other unknown but good Rapidshare download managers, or know similar apps which work under Mac or Linux, please share them using the comments below.
Tagged: download manager • downloader • rapidshare
