Despite what Kim Dotcom said about the service, MEGA has the backing of millions of users who use the platform to share and preserve files. As always, direct downloads gain efficiency and speed when combined with a good assistant, and that’s how we came across MegaDownloader, which is lightweight, easy to use, and packed with very interesting advanced options.
Direct downloads have lost a bit of popularity, though it’s actually quite relative. The BitTorrent world felt several blows in recent months, a detail that reminds us of the permanent conflict between users and copyright hawks. Finding direct links may require a bit more work, but in the end they always appear, and they work long enough. This is because links are reported sooner or later, and the service providers take care of removing content to avoid problems. That’s what happens today with MEGA. Between Kim Dotcom’s statements and suspicions of surveillance by the New Zealand government, some users prefer to stay away… but that doesn’t change the fact that the platform works quite well, and that its alternatives are not safer without prior precautions (such as a VPN).
Although there are assistants with support for MEGA links (as far as I know, jDownloader hasn’t gone anywhere), MegaDownloader is one of the simplest and most effective. Once installed (it has no portable edition) it will intercept all compatible MEGA links copied to the clipboard, and offer to start their download. MegaDownloader supports entering our MEGA account, but this step is completely optional. It also includes a parallel streaming system that allows viewing videos without downloading them, although this requires the portable version of VLC Player, and a bit of manual configuration. Finally, MegaDownloader has a steganography module, which hides MEGA links in an image.
The only technical detail to consider about MegaDownloader is that it needs the presence of .NET Framework 4.0 in its full edition, something that shouldn’t be a problem on the most recent versions of Windows. Its official site offers downloads via Adfly to finance itself, but it’s a minor annoyance, and despite the warnings the browser may show, the installer and the program are clean (verified with VirusTotal). In short: If you use MEGA a lot, you should take a closer look at MegaDownloader.
