casimps1: I noticed that none of the extras (manuals, wallpapers, etc) that I tried would download more than about 300 KB/s.
JMich: The extras only use 1 connection, since as I recall the windows downloader doesn't support resuming for extras. As for servers being slow at times, a pause and resume should usually fix it, since it should recheck servers and pick another one.
Do you also get slow downloads when you are not using the downloader, or is only the downloader slow?
Yes, with the downloader set to a single connection, speeds are the same with the downloader and without... with multiple connections the speed would be multiplied... but now that you mention it, I think it's always been the extras that have had the worst speeds. And that was when my setting number of connections didn't seem to make a difference. So what you say makes a lot of sense!
Though it seems like that should really be documented somewhere.