Product: NetFlow 2.1
Company: Ora-Creative
Website: http://www.ora-creative.fr
Estimated Street Price: $30.00
Review By: Julien Jay

Introduction

Every web surfer knows that downloading files can be painful due to many factors: huge file size, server failure, bad quality internet connection, human errors, power cut, etc…There’s a solution for all this annoying issues. Since a few months we’ve seen many download managers, but one has retained all our attention. It’s NetFlow 2.1. This program is a shareware and it was made by a young French startup. Yep, French have also got  “Savoir-faire” to build amazing software! By the way this software has received awards by Ziff-Davis and France Telecom.

Installation & Startup

After you have download the file or insert the CD a quick and easy setup will start. It’s based on the Windows Installer technology so there shouldn’t be any problem during setup. Enter your name and your serial number and it’s done. You’re ready to enjoy advanced download management.

NetFlow automatically starts with Windows 98. It takes place in the tray notification area. NetFlow comes with a superb black interface that contains all the information & features you need to achieve great downloads! In one window it presents send/receive flow information and downloading information. But you can also reduce the window to just show in a gauge the send/receive flow.

Features

NetFlow monitors your Internet connection to show you the flow of your bandwidth: and you’ll also be able to see how much bytes you send and how much bytes you received. But that’s not all, sure. To download a file simply drag & drop the file link to the ‘download’ hotspot of NetFlow 2.1. The download will start and you’ll be prompted to choose a folder to store the file. NetFlow will show you during the download the accomplished download percentage and a little animation will make you wait. During the file download you can also dropped other files to download where you’ll be able to choose when they should be download and what to do when they’re downloaded. A little button will stop your Internet connection. And finally it included a resume download feature! So if when NetFlow was retrieving and the Internet dialup hanged up. You can resume the file download process! Great feature!

But that’s not all! You can schedule download to start during the night to save money on your phone invoices! You can define an action for this scheduling: once the last file is downloaded the Internet connection can be cut and the computer can be shutdown automatically. You can even limit the Internet connection till a defined hour. Great, isn’t it? But you can also define a maximum time to surf the net by day so once you’ve exceed the allowed download time you won’t be able to connect you to the net before the next day!

You can also blocked any Internet connection between a certain time period… So you won’t have any surprise and your child, employee won’t surf the net when you don’t want to! Sure this feature is protected by a password.

During downloading files you can view the entire scheduled file download event in one window. Each file will be shown with a specific colour: white for files that are in wait state, green for files that are currently downloaded, yellow for a temporary download break, and red for files that can’t be downloaded.

Final Comments

How It Grades
		Setup: 95% Download Manafment: 85% Features: 80% Cost: 90% Ease of Use: 80% Overall: 85%

NetFlow is very good software for a reasonable price. It provides advanced features to power Internet users. We’ve noticed a few problems: you can’t download file that requires a CGI script, you can’t download files on a HTTPS website and finally you can’t set on top the window of NetFlow. But we’re sure that all this minor problems will be solved in next free updates. 

                             So why wait, download a preview here:                                         http://www.ora-creative.fr/gb/home/index.html.