Download Speed in the IE9 Download Manager

One of the common questions we’ve received about IE9’s new download manager is “Where’s the download speed"?”

The answer is that the download speed is shown in a tooltip over the download completion percentage, like so:

DownloadSpeedInTheDownloadManager

Upon hearing this, some  subset of beta testers have requested that we move this information out to the top-level. The download manager team is considering that feedback and other suggestions from the community.

I’m interested, however, in why this information is so important that it should appear on the top level? Is it because users want to benchmark their network connection? Or is it because the percentage-completion and time-remaining numbers aren’t enough to indicate that the download is still proceeding well? Is it because the old IE8 download dialog showed this information and it would be comforting to see it in IE9 as well? Or is the reason for this request something else entirely? Please let us know!

Update: Thanks for all of the feedback. In the IE9 Release Candidate build, download speed information was returned to the top-level UI.

thanks!

-Eric