Download v CD purchase. Some thoughts..

[Guest allblack]

Morning all, well it is in NZ...Just thinking out loud here. With the pending (?) release of the 747, I've been giving much thought to the process of downloading this, as it appears the CD version will be months after, and I can't wait!I don't have the luxury of a broadband connection, so when it's released I'll be shooting off around to a mate's place to get my plane. This has got me thinking about the, what's the word, reliability of downloads, especially for these planes.For the above reason, I don't download many large files. The biggest I've managed to get is about 20mb, at a rate of four minutes per mb.So I'll be downloading to a hard-drive, copying to a disk, taking the disk home and installing on my PC. What concerns me is some of the data getting "messed up" during this process, and having problems with the plane at the end of it all.Does PMDG, or the download itself, have any "checks and balances" in place that ensures the download completes completely and accurately, and the final product on my PC is exactly what left the PMDG server?Sorry if I worded that badly, but I can't think of another way of putting it.I'm assuming that the download process is pretty much foolproof, given how many people do it, and I'm curious to know if I can somehow verify what I've got at the end of it all is all present and correct?Apologies if this is a dumb question..CheersTim

[NJ_Flyer 3]

G'Day mateI too have a dial-up connection, but it hasnt stopeed me downloading large files.. all I do is start downloading them before I go to bed. Most of the time, the download is complete by morning, or I just pause it and download the rest the next night. I use DAP for my downloads.. makes it a lot easier when you have a slow internet connection.Hope this is of some help to you mate :)

[Guest allblack]

Cheers cobber (cringe).What's DAP? .....and my ISP would probably chuck me out of the connection half-way through...CheersTim

[crvm 0]

If you are heading over to your mate's house to download because you don't have high speed and your friend does? I don't think you need to worry about taking it from the hard drive and putting it on CXD and then installing it to your hard drive. If a download does not work it simply will not work. Does not mean that your link will be good for only one try.[h4]Randy J. Smith[/h4]

[Guest Philip Olson]

Tim, I would not worry too much about anything missing from a dowload like that, if there were any data corruption or missed data chances are that you would not even be able to install it. Since the planes are installed via an installer this pretty much takes away the chances of a missing file. The only way to check before you try to install such items is to check the size of the file after the download completes, compare it to what the provider says it will be, it may vary by a small amount since most people will round of to the nearest whole number. Unless it is megabytes smaller than what you are supposed to get I would just go ahead and try to install it. For me it has been extremely rare that I have gotten corrupted downloads from anywhere so I would not worry about this at all, just download, install and enjoy!Philip OlsonI'm the luckiest man in the world, my girl friend has a yoke and rudder pedals! Eat your hearts out!http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg

[Guest allblack]

Thanks for the responses guys.I'm thinking more along the lines of a couple of bytes missing here, and a couple missing there.Potentially on the forum a week later...Q: My altimeter seems to have a jerking motion?A: Maybe a problem with your download.Q: My cockpit lighting seems erratic?A: Check your download, you may have a corrupted file.Q: Where's my cupholder?A: On the left, check again!etc etc etcYou see where I'm going with this? The "corruption" may be so small as to not register on any check for file size, but it could be just enough to make a difference in the sim.Hence my original question. Though Randy made the point that (I think) if I have a problem I can download and try again? Anyway, food for thought, and I appreciate your responses.CheersTim

[NJ_Flyer 3]

DAP is Download Accelerator Plus. Its available from www.download.comIts freeware (but there is a advertisement asking if you want to upgrade).Its great when your internet connection drops off, if the website your downloading from supports resumable downloads, you can just continue when you re-connect.Getright is another program like this, both very good :)

[G7USL 117]

A word of warning about 'DAP' My spyware program has labelled it EXTREMELY DANGEROUS!Use it at your own risk. I deleted itAll the best,Dave.'Three greens and soft landings'

[imoore 1]

With that thought, I'd like to make a recommendation for "Free Download Manager" (available here: http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/)I'm not affiliated with them or anything, but as far as I can tell it's spyware free* and has just a straight forward interface. It'll accelerate, pause, search for mirrors and all the usual stuff. It has a site explorer (to download files that are in multiple parts) too. I use firefox and downloaded a plugin called "flashgot" (not to be confused with FlashGet) which allows you to incorporate a number of different download managers into firefox's "safe file as" dialog box, giving you the option to use the standard firefox downloader or to use your download manager's.* When I say spyware free, I mean I haven't found anything suspecious such as ads or popups. Microsoft Antispyware hasn't said anything nor has McAfee Enterprise, which also scans for spyware. It did, however, go insane when I installed "FlashGet"