Thanks, Willy, I've done nothing but Google for information on these topics! Unfortunately, topics are many but solutions that work consistently are few and far between. Mornings are the best times to get reasonable download speeds here in France. Afternoons and evenings, especially during the summer holidays(!) are worse. I get free downloads (don't count towards my approx 8.5 GB monthly download limit) from 23:00 to 07:00 as part of my package but all the world is trying to download stuff during that period so it can be pretty slow. A download manager might be the answer - I'll give it a try.........