How to Download Files From The Internet

Special Note to Macintosh Users: Unless you're running SoftWindows 95/98, RealPC or Virtual PC the majority of the files available from Paul's Picks and other software libraries will not be usable on a Macintosh.

Downloading Shareware, Freeware and Demo Programs

ZIP files and Self Installing EXE files are the first topic. Most files on the Internet are packaged in either the standard ZIP file format or a self installing executable EXE file. These are actually "containers" that hold a number of files in a library. That library is compressed for size to make downloading to your computer faster than if they were at their original size. If they are in the ZIP format, you will need a ZIP manager on your computer. We have several available in the Shareware Library and one of the most popular is WinZip which can be downloaded as a self-installer.

So on to downloading instructions. While browsing the library of files, you will see the download links. An example might look like this:

Simply click on the link to start the download procedure. That will open a File Download Dialog that has a few choices. We strongly suggest that you select the "Save this file to disk" option. This way you will know where to find the file later to extract the application or whatever is in the archive without problems. The selection looks like this:

Select the option as above and click OK to continue. At that point, a "File Save As" Dialog will open. This is where you will make the selection where the download should be placed. It's strongly suggested that you have a special folder already set up for downloading files. In the example below, you can see we have selected our special folder which is named Downloads.

You also have the opportunity to change the name of the download file but again, we suggest that you leave it as is and click on the Save button which will start the download.

That's all there is to downloading the files. If they are self-installers, simply open the Downloads folder in the Windows File Explorer and double click on the Icon for the new file. If it is a ZIP file and you have installed WinZip on your system, a double click will open the archive in WinZip so you can extract the files to install them.