fastest is almost always in the wee hours of the morning for whereever the server is. For the UK, it would mean about 8-12 PM your time.

easiest download manager? Several choices, Susan. *IF* you use Firefox, there are special add-on utilities that are excellent. "Down them all", for example. But you do have to go get these and install them.

If you use Opera, as I do most of the time, there is a special box for pasting a single URL and downloading to a specified location....or, usually, I just right-click and choose "save target as". This does just fine for most needs.

Now...all that being said, there are also standalone download managers for larger groups of items...I used to use DLExpert a lot, and it was fine.

Even better is Net Transport, but it has gone shareware. I still use the last free version and can barely imagine needing whatever new features they want to be paid for. It is just great....for individual files, or groups. I can probably dig up my freeware file if you want it.

Then, for special occasions, (depending on type of file), there is Mihov's Picture Downloader, which 'will' get stuff other than images. It is amazingly clever.