Best Usenet service & reader/agent/whatever?

[thawolfman]

In regards to the HD Return of the King thread.

I saw someone say that easynews is $10/10gig. Is this the best price per gig, and service?

I'm relatively a usenet noob, aside what my ISP offers (SBC Newsgroups = Suck)

So, um, yeah - if anyone can help me with this, or if I shouldn't be talking about it here than IM/PM me so that we can discuss.

kthxbye
-Ben-

 

[Lars]

I use Newsbin Pro as reader and news.astraweb.com as usenet service ($15 per month, 2mbps).

 

[phonemonkey]

I use cox.net for my usenet service. I haven't noticed any download caps on it (I've gone over 5 gigs/day before). Personally, I use xnews as my reader since I can decode both regular and YENC attachments. I can also have multiple groups open at once, too.

 

[Kaervak]

Easynews is $10 for 6GB. You have to run a DC application to get the few extra GB added to your limit. With that said, I used Easynews for a few months. Really nice service. Great retention, very nice speeds. No real complaints. With Easynews I used Xnews as the reader. Freeware program that supports yEnc encoding, multiple groups open at once. Rather small footprint and not a resource hog. I'm currently using Giganews which is supplied by my ISP. Another rather nice service. Great retention and fast speeds.

 

[spidey]

Easynews is a great service, but $10/6 gigs can add up. I use AstraWeb, $15/unlimited DSL, and I'm happy with it. As far as newsreaders, check out GrabIt (free).

 

[cricky]

Grabit is a good usenet binary program. But it hasn't been updated in over a year. Free though, works almost as good as Newsbin for a single server.

Easynews is top notch. I used usenetserver for awhile. Was pretty good, with intermittent problems. Get free newsfeeds through Comcast still...

 

[cronos]

Originally posted by: Kaervak
Easynews is $10 for 6GB. You have to run a DC application to get the few extra GB added to your limit. With that said, I used Easynews for a few months. Really nice service. Great retention, very nice speeds. No real complaints. With Easynews I used Xnews as the reader. Freeware program that supports yEnc encoding, multiple groups open at once. Rather small footprint and not a resource hog. I'm currently using Giganews which is supplied by my ISP. Another rather nice service. Great retention and fast speeds.

it's 10 GB now.

 

[MrCodeDude]

I use GrabIt and Astraweb.

GrabIt uses a lot of resources, but I don't really like any of the other clients.

 

[Kaervak]

Originally posted by: saxguy

Originally posted by: Kaervak
Easynews is $10 for 6GB. You have to run a DC application to get the few extra GB added to your limit. With that said, I used Easynews for a few months. Really nice service. Great retention, very nice speeds. No real complaints. With Easynews I used Xnews as the reader. Freeware program that supports yEnc encoding, multiple groups open at once. Rather small footprint and not a resource hog. I'm currently using Giganews which is supplied by my ISP. Another rather nice service. Great retention and fast speeds.

it's 10 GB now.

Oooh, cool. Haven't used their service in quite a while so this is news to me.

 

[spidey]

10 gigs, I may have to check it out again. Their web interface is nice.

 

[jdiddy]

Newsbin pro with my unlimited Verizon dsl bandwidth.

 

[cronos]

Originally posted by: Kaervak

Originally posted by: saxguy

Originally posted by: Kaervak
Easynews is $10 for 6GB. You have to run a DC application to get the few extra GB added to your limit. With that said, I used Easynews for a few months. Really nice service. Great retention, very nice speeds. No real complaints. With Easynews I used Xnews as the reader. Freeware program that supports yEnc encoding, multiple groups open at once. Rather small footprint and not a resource hog. I'm currently using Giganews which is supplied by my ISP. Another rather nice service. Great retention and fast speeds.

it's 10 GB now.

Oooh, cool. Haven't used their service in quite a while so this is news to me.

they just recently upgraded their service. i think June 1st. i have been with them for at least 4 years now and i'm very happy with the service. before easynews i have tried supernews and newsguy (i'm not sure that they are still around). easynews has one of the best binary retention out there. i have found up to 6 weeks binary retention on some groups from their web interface (more retention through their web interface than through NNTP).

anyway, i don't remember exactly why i didn't go the Giganews or Usenetserver route, but i didn't. with easynews i have been running their UD client on like four machines for about three years, so i have plenty of free gigabytes if i ever download more than my quota (i believe it's close to 30 Gig). with 6 GB/month it happened often, with 10 GB i'm not sure that i even need extra gigs.

there's this text group that discuss about the comparison of usenet providers:

alt.binaries.news-server.comparison

used to be very helpful if you're shopping around for a provider.

 

[luckyducky]

Used astraweb for awhile. Good service, but speeds might be slow for some. Ive heard
great things about Newshosting.com with their 14+day retention, unlimited accounts(14.95).

 

[pulse8]

I use usenetserver.com.

Unlimited for $14.95 a month and I get 5mb downloads.

Newsbin Pro is the best reader and well worth the purchase price.

 

[Cerb]

I use my ISP's service, but for a reader to do binaries, PAN simply rocks.

 

[FleshLight]

I've recently found out that my isp offers a newsgroup service.

I hear all this talk about newsbin, easynews, astraweb, resnet, and usenet. anyone care to clue in a newsgroup n00b?

 

[luckyducky]

Here is a good site Ive found that can help you get started in the newsgroup world.
http://www.slyck.com/ng.php

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: FleshLight
I've recently found out that my isp offers a newsgroup service.

I hear all this talk about newsbin, easynews, astraweb, resnet, and usenet. anyone care to clue in a newsgroup n00b?

I found a newsgroup service about washing machines once. MrCodeDude was the admin.

 

[cronos]

Originally posted by: FleshLight
I've recently found out that my isp offers a newsgroup service.

I hear all this talk about newsbin, easynews, astraweb, resnet, and usenet. anyone care to clue in a newsgroup n00b?

since you already have a newsgroup service, and assuming you want to use it (i believe it's supernews provided by charter.net, i know that from the other thread), you don't need easynews, astraweb, giganews, or usenetserver, since they are usenet providers. so forget about them for now.

what you want to focus on finding information about right now is news client (newsbin, xnews, forte agent, newsrover, etc). this is a software that grab messages for you from the newsgroup service above, with all of their respective features.

 

[nageov3t]

I used NewsGuy for about a year and a half (at the recomendation of some stupid friends )... The speeds eventually became so crappy that I dropped it (average speed was about 2-3K/sec over DSL).

Been using Astraweb for the past couple months. It's great.

Oh, and another vote for XNews. it rocks for downloading binaries... not the greatest for discussion groups, but it's the king of downloads

 

[cronos]

Originally posted by: loki8481
I used NewsGuy for about a year and a half (at the recomendation of some stupid friends )... The speeds eventually became so crappy that I dropped it (average speed was about 2-3K/sec over DSL).

lol. i hear ya. i used them for a few months too and then they got slower and slower until i couldn't stand it anymore.

Been using Astraweb for the past couple months. It's great.

Oh, and another vote for XNews. it rocks for downloading binaries... not the greatest for discussion groups, but it's the king of downloads

for some reason i can't get myself to use a news client other than Forte Agent. i know they have a lot of issues, but i found myself coming back to it after i tried other clients. i guess i just got used to the interface.

btw, for me Outlook Express is THE client for text/discussion group.. lol