Monday, September 12, 2011

Where to Go for Free Downloads

If you've got teenagers, I bet they know exactly where to download free music, games, videos and more.  I know my kids do, but I've never really looked into it.  Until now.

I've been checking out this site called general-files.com.  You type in the name of something you're looking for and get a whole list of options to choose from.  General-files.com is like a huge file search engine to help you find all the free files available on the Internet.  If you're looking to download free music, movies or games, it looks like a really good place to start.  They pull together files from all the different file sharing sites on the internet - 4shared.com, rapidshare.com, mediafire.com, and a whole list of others - some I've heard of and some I haven't.  The beauty of it is that you don't have to know about or visit all those different sites and search for what you're looking for.  You can just search in this one place.   You can also refine your searches by choosing to only search within some of those file sharing sites, choosing to search Everything or limiting the type and size of the files you want.

They've got a new option called general-catalog.com which is supposed to make searching for those free downloads even easier.  It's designed to be more intuitive and visual so that it's easier to use.  Instead of just a file name like you get at general-files.com, you also get a description of what the file is and even an image of what you're getting.  They have about 2 million categorized files together with user-written description articles.  Since the General Files site indexes more than 235 million files, they have a ways to go to get them all into the free downloads directory at general-catalog.com, but I think it's going to be a lot easier to find the files you're looking for using the catalog site.  At least for me.  You can also see which files are popular and what other people are looking at and downloading, which is kind of fun and also can be really helpful in deciding which file is the right one.  Users are encouraged to rate the files, report any problems and just generally help improve the experience for everyone.  If you're like me, you worry a bit about downloading anything, so I like to know what other people think first.

To download from either of these sites, you should download and install their free download software called General Downloader.  It supports downloading from direct links and from many of the file-hosting websites.  You can search directly from the application and download from many of these sites without being bogged down in the endless captchas, popups, and other obstacles they apparently like to put in your way.  Use it to download files from general-files.com or general-catalog.com.  Use it as a hotfile no captcha downloader.  It's free for everyone and integrates into all the popular browsers. 

How many free files will I download?  I don't know, but I like knowing where to look if I want to.