Hi VideoGeek,
I hope your download worked out for you. Unfortunately, the nature of the downloader is that it requires you to download a bunch of small files. Each individual file takes virtually no time at all to download - often the individual files are just a few lines of text. However, there's a fixed time cost associated with each one. The downloader has to ask the server "Give me file X, please", and the server has to send the file back.
Assuming that your internet connection has even 0.25 seconds of "lag", that means that every download will take at least half a second - 1/4 of a second for the message to get to the server, and 1/4 of a second for the reply to get back. If your internet connection is slower, then each download will take correspondingly longer. The server also takes some time to process your request, but typically this is less than the time the information takes to get back to you (servers can answer requests pretty speedily).
Unfortunately there's really nothing that the downloader can do about this.
If it's taking you a full day just to get through the items, then each one must be taking several seconds to complete - it isn't normal for a few paragraphs of text to take that long to download over the internet. Are you sure your internet connection is working properly? if you have a high latency, it might be something you could ask your ISP to look into.
Hope this helps...