Configuring General Preferences

The General Preferences tab controls the way downloading jobs are started, ran and finished, how job progress is reported and logged, and a few other parameters.

Starting And Running Downloading Jobs

This group of controls defines how downloading jobs get started and ran.

Start new jobs automatically

This option controls what happens with new jobs after Binjet gets a new task file. A job may be started automatically, or it can be registered and left waiting till you explicitly start it manually. You don't want to start every job manually because it would involve too much mouse clicking. On the other hand, you want an option to start some jobs only when you are ready for it. For example, you may want to run large jobs overnight. You have the following options regarding automatic start of jobs:

Never - all jobs will require a manual start after having been added (by opening a task file). You would have to click on the job in the list (Downloading Jobs tab) and then on the Start button, to get the job started.

Only small jobs (single article/picture) - small jobs involving a single article or less than 500KB of downloading will be started automatically. Larger jobs will require a manual start.

All jobs - any job will be started automatically, after its task file has been opened. Tip: even if you select this option, you still can postpone starting any jobs. Just save their task files to disk when downloading from a search engine, and open them with Binjet when you want to start the job.

Give small jobs higher priority

If this checkbox is checked, small jobs will be processed faster than others. You may want it to work this way because when you are downloading a few huge files in background, you may still want to download music samples or individual pictures interactively in order to decide whether to download whole song or whole set of pictures. If there is no high priority for small jobs, they would have to wait till the earlier jobs have finished. This might take hours.

Reserve connections for high priority jobs

If this is checked, every account will have one connection reserved for high priority jobs. Normal jobs will not use this connection. When a high priority (see above) job is started, it can use this connection immediately. If there is no connection reservation, the new job would have to wait till at least one of the other jobs finishes downloading its current article and a connection becomes available.

Check availability before downloading

If this is checked, Binjet will check that every article of a multipart file is available on at least one news server before starting to download the file. Assembling a multipart file is possible only if every part has been downloaded. If any part is missing, the file can't be assembled, and downloading of other parts is a waste of time and bandwidth. Checking availability helps to avoid spending resources on trying to download large files that can't be assembled anyway because of missing parts. Note that there is still no 100% guarantee that all parts will be downloaded successfully, even if they are reported available by news servers. They may expire by the time Binjet comes after them. In fact, they may expire at any time. This is the way news servers work.

Logging

Logging helps to understand what is going on in cases of unexpected behaviour and troubleshoot the system. Should you want any help from us, it is most likely that we will ask you for a log.

Log level

Don't log anything - if your news servers are good, Binjet works perfectly and you understand what's going on at any time, you don't need logging.

Log errors only - a useful setting, gives you a chance to check what is the problem when something goes wrong.

Log errors and warnings - more details about problems, including potential ones.

Debug level logging - we will need this level of details to help you in case you have a problem and need help.

Verbose logging - adds some extra details to the debug level logging, useful very rarely.

Clear log file on start - log file is cleaned every time you start Binjet. Else you have to delete the log file regularly yourself. It may grow very large, depending on your log level.

Downloading Progress Reporting

When downloading is in progress, it is nice to see that something is happening, and have a rough idea of how far it is gone. Job progress is indicated in at least three places: downloaded traffic is added to the account traffic counter, to the job traffic counter, and job progress is explicitly shown in job progress dialog that may or may not be started for a particular job, depending on the configuration. Note that the traffic counters may show numbers that don't match. For example, when an article is not available, its size is added to the job traffic counter and counted as downloaded. It is not added to the account traffic counter.

Show progress dialogs

For all downloading jobs - when any job starts, a job progress dialog is created and shown. It lets you track job progress and stop the job with a click of the button. Almost the same information is shown in the jobs list, and you can stop the job by clicking a button in the Downloading Jobs tab too. Progress dialogs are a matter of convenience. You can have them or you can switch them off.

Only for multi-file jobs - shows progress dialogs only for jobs that download multiple files.

Only for jobs bigger than 500KB - shows progress dialogs only for jobs that download more than 500KB.

No progress dialogs, work in background - switches off progress dialogs. You can still start a progress dialog for any job by clicking a button in the Downloading Jobs tab.

When downloading finishes, close the progress dialog

Always - when any job finishes, the job progress dialog is closed automatically, no matter whether the job has been a success or not.

Only if the job finishes successfully - the progress dialog is closed only if the job did not have any problems.

Only if the job is small - automatically close progress dialogs only for jobs that download less than 500KB.

Only if the job is small and successful- automatically close progress dialogs only for jobs that download less than 500KB and finish successfully.

When downloading finishes, remove the job from the list

Always - when any job finishes, it is automatically removed from the jobs list in the Downloading Jobs tab.

Only if the job finishes successfully - when a job finishes, it is removed from the jobs list only if it did not have any problems.

Only if the job is small - only small jobs that download less than 500KB are automatically removed from the list when finished.

Only if the job is small and successful - only small jobs that download less than 500KB and finish successfully are automatically removed from the list when finished.

Other Controls

Internet connection speed - together with the bandwidth usage parameter (see below), this parameter control the maximum downloading speed Binjet tries to achieve. Binjet can't detect the speed limit automatically because it depends on too many factors, including the hardware, network topology, other software on your computer, your news server performance, etc. It is important to set these values right. If you set them too low, downloading speed will be slower than it could be. If you set them too high, Binjet will try to achieve unrealistic high speed by opening more news server connections. This will not make any difference for you, but will put unnecessary load on the news servers.

Use ... of the bandwidth - sets the share of your available bandwidth that Binjet is allowed to use. You can set this share to less than 100% if you want to reserve bandwidth for other applications.

Base directory - this is the directory where Binjet will store your settings and its temporary files. To choose a new base directory, first create it using Windows Explorer. Then click on Browse button in Binjet General Preferences, navigate to your directory and click OK. It is highly recommended that you use a directory on a hard drive with plenty of space, outside of your system folders and not on your system drive. You can't change base directory if you have unfinished jobs.

Minimize to system tray - if this is checked, Binjet hides its task bar button when minimized and only the system tray icon is visible. To see Binjet, right-click on the icon and select "Show".

Switch off that silly tray icon animation - the tray icon shows downloading activity when jobs are in progress and new traffic is coming. If you find this annoying, switch it off.

Quit button - quits Binjet. All running jobs are interrupted, but nothing is lost except the last article(s) being downloaded.

Help button - displays this page.