PC Tonic

A majority of the ISPs in India offer “unlimited” night-time download packages at very cheap prices, which means downloading anything in these free night-hours won’t count in your monthly download cap. With these packages, downloading large files is obviously possible only during the free hours. The problem (craftily created by the ISPs) is that the free hours mostly start after 12 midnight and last till 6-8 a.m. in the morning. Staying awake till late night to download stuff isn’t very healthy, and again you’ve to wake up early to stop the downloads after the free hours are up.

The above scenario may not seem very bright, but you can make it much better with a few tweaks and some dead useful software! With further ado, let’s take a look at how to make full use of your free night hours.

1.Go grab these software.

Before explaining anything, I’ll ask you to download and install these free and small software. All’s well if you use similar other tools and would rather stay with them.

μTorrent – for scheduled and fast torrent downloads

Free Download Manager (lite version) – for scheduled download of files through HTTP / FTP

AMP WinOFF – for automatic shut-down of your computer

2.Assumptions.

In this post, we’ll assume that

• the free download hours range from 12 – 7 a.m.
• your PC won’t get too hot and set your house on fire.

3.Torrent downloads.

A torrent is the best way to download large files (> 500 MB) from the Internet. Now you need a BitTorrent client to get files through torrents, and μTorrent is definitely the best in this category for Windows. This meagre 250 kilo-byte tool comes optimised for best download rates and has a wealth of useful features, including a scheduler. With μTorrent’s extensive scheduler, you can easily choose portions of a day when you want full-speed downloads, limited downloads, or no download at all. We obviously want our downloads to be full-speed during the free hours and limited (or zero) during any other time; so this is how we configured it :

• Open μTorrent, and go to the Scheduler section through Options > Preferences > Scheduler. A table with all 7 week-days, and 24 boxes for each day, will appear. These boxes imply the 24 hours of the day. Select the “Enable Scheduler” option, and all the boxes will be coloured deep-green by default. You can change the colour simply by left clicking on the box multiple times. You can see the meaning of each colour code in the screenshot.

• As you can see, I’ve created a thought out schedule which allows full download from 12 – 7 a.m., cuts off the transfer an hour after and before this period, and allows only limited transfer rest of the time. You can assign the value of max. download and upload rates during the limited schedule.

Create a schedule that suits you and μTorrent will take care of the rest.

4.HTTP / FTP downloads.

Using a download manager is a good idea for downloading anything other than torrents. And Free Download Manager is easily one of the best options for Windows users. FDM actually supports BitTorrent downloads as well, though it’s nowhere as good as μTorrent. You can therefore get the 2 MB lite version, which excludes BitTorrent support and a few other extra features. FDM also has a scheduler option, which can be accessed from Options > Settings > Downloads > Time limit. Here you can set the time period (00:00 – 07:00, in our case) within which FDM can start a download. Now, even if you add a new download at 9 p.m., FDM will start it only at 12 midnight.

You can also choose the time for a download to stop (7 a.m. / 07:00 in our case). Right click on the file to be downloaded, select Schedule > Stop, and set the stopping time to 07:00.

5.Save power!

Your PC is now completely ready to make full use of the 7/8 free hours that you get from your ISP. This also implies significantly larger electricity bills, unless you do your part to conserve max. possible energy. Here are some tips you could do with -

• You don’t want your PC to keep running after the free download period. This is where AMP WinOFF comes in handy. Just specify a time (07:00) and activate this tiny app, and it’ll promptly shutdown your computer at that time. There are a bunch of other options in WinOFF, do what’s best for you.

• Sometime, your downloads might finish well within the free download period, say at 5 a.m. Again you won’t want your PC to be running an extra 2 hours before it’s shut down by WinOFF. Thankfully, both μTorrent and FDM have options to shut down your computer once the downloads are over, as shown below.

• Laptops are far more power efficient than desktops, but they can overheat if left running the entire night. If you’re using a laptop, make sufficient cooling arrangements.
• Turn off the display of your monitor to save power. Most desktop monitors have a power button, while the “Power options” in Windows will help you for laptops. In Windows Vista / 7, click on the battery icon in the system tray and select “More power options”. Under your preferred plan, select “Change plan settings”. The window shown below will appear and you can adjust the settings to your liking. The values shown in the screenshot should be ideal for night time downloads. Do make sure that the option, “Put your computer to sleep”, is set to Never so that your laptop doesn’t sleep half way through the downloads!

The Internet is HUGE, go start your downloads today tonight! And if you’ve got your own downloading secrets, do share with us in your comments.