Unlimited Newsgroups for $8.95.

[deramon]

I had easynews, giganews and now usenetserver. Usenetserver is not the greatest but, it is the best deal out there for unlimited downloads. Rentention is okay but limited to about 4 days, completion is over 90% and usually more. Just my experience...

 

[noxxic]

Usenetserver is pretty much the best right now if you download a lot of binaries (say >10GB), imo. 100proof may be cheaper, but I've also heared about their massive completion problems. At least with UNS, it's only ocassionally that I have to download 5 or 10 parts (not even files) from another source.

Newzpig? Yeah, i had an account there once. I know that their tech guy (which everyone thought was the owner) quit. They also had some kind of problem with their BofA billing software. They charged me for a few months, and then the charges disappeared. I'm not complaining... Although I hear others got f**ked and got their checking accounts drained.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Around usenet 100proofnews has about the worst reputation possible. They seem to have thousands of ex-customers, but very very few current and satisfied customers. They're known for hooking people with the cheap price and that "unlimited downloads" BS, but their speed, completion rate and server reliability are the pits. Most of their customers leave after the first month and anyone that pays by the year for any usenet provider is a complete moron. I've been using sonic-news to back up my normally good ISP news server and it's been pretty good. Speed is up and down, during bad periods it's pretty slow, but during good times it's capable of about a megabtye every 2-3 seconds. Completion ratio and retention are both excellent and 250MB per day is plenty if you know what you're doing and use a multi-server newsreader. Easynews is great too, but I found the retention to be too good. Since they have 30 day retention in most binary groups it takes forever to get all the headers. Avoid Newsguy, they're cheap and completion is decent, but retention sucks and you can clock their download speed with a sundial. I've had dial-up accounts that were faster than Newsguy.

 

[00Zardoz00]

Ok, here is the lowdown... first of all, sign up for Teranews. You can get a "free" account for $3.95 one-time fee, and 50MB/day fairly fast. To get bigger limits, you have to pay monthly, but Teranews is a great "backup plan," better than random free servers. Next, Easynews rocks. Easynews is web based and all the binaries are already decoded!!! So using IE or whatever browser you go there and see only the files or pictures you want (it hides everything but the binaries (files) so you can concentrate on downloading those (they are what you want, right?)... also, at Easynews you can search multiple newsgroups (they are beta testing a glogal search), then check up to 500 files, zip them up and download the zip = awesome! Nothing else like it - highly recommended. Easynews is like $8.95/month or 6 gigs whatever comes first. Also, you can personally do a network trace and select which of their providers you route through, like AT&T GiGE connections, OC12, etc which is nice when one is having a problem. Retention on Easynews is 30 DAYS!!! Example: let's say you "accidently" clicked on alt.binaries....playboy (oops!) ... you would see, for each of 30 days, about 20,000 thumbnails ready to download. Of course, you would never want that smut on your computer, so you would quickly go back to the original alt.binaries.religious-texts newsgroup you had originally been looking for. I believe that Giganews or newsfeeds.com are the biggest and best regular usenet providers (many, many other services use a pipe to newsfeeds, not to burst anyone's bubble) but they get REAL expensive monthly for good speed and limits. Sorry about the pimpage but I am very pleased with the above services

Teranews Claims:
No censorship
No logging of your reading
No throttling of your download speed
No connection limits
Anonymous posting
Firewall counter measures
UNLIMITED POSTING!

Easynews claims:
EasyNews® automatically decodes and indexes the binary files found in UseNet. If a binary file is posted to any newsgroup, EasyNews® will catalog it into an easy-to-navigate thumbnail index. We browse through ALL the newsgroups to bring you the newsgroups that contain binary files such as AVI's, MPEG's, MP3's, ZIP's and JPEG's

 

[JeffMD]

usenetserver.com sucks. I stoped useing it 2 weeks ago after about a 2 month stretch because the servers would run good for 5 days, and then the next 5 days would be plagued with problems ranging from newsgroups being unaccessable, to entire newsgroups being wiped out. Most of these problems are due to their distributed load system routing you to a server that is having "problems", which saddly ends up being %50 of their system all the time. if you try hard enough you can reget all header once you connect to a good server, but most news clients are not ment to respond to one "newsservice" as if it was multiple servers, so if your group gets whiped out because the client saw everything was gone, or "expired", its a royal pain to fix it.

Easynews is king, but not exactly cheap either. I how ever have no problems with it because I use my road runner news server (which has its own hickups as well as a 2 day retention) to download the bulk of my anime, and then use easynews for fills, and missed postings.

also easynews allowes you to gain free gigs by signing up for the cancer reasearch project. ive got the program running on 2 computers full time and a 3rd computer some of the time so I net 3-5 gigs a month free.

 

[noxxic]

With a little patience, UNS is pretty good... Use their IP addresses instead of domain to avoid getting tossed through different servers. If you want to avoid those, yup, go with Easynews or Giganews. For me though, since I download ~90GB/mo, UNS has been great.

newsfeeds.com and resellers suck actually. I tried value-news.net's (newsfeed reseller) 5.95 service for a few months as a filler and a lot of files were incomplete or files were totally missing.

 

[JeffMD]

noxxic, remembering the addresses of the specific servers (and going through them all looking for working server) is a pain, whats worse is the heavy downloaders (read, abusers) KNOW this and so when the loader routes people to bad servers, it dosnt take long for OTHER servers to come down due to high load.

 

[Lars]

Originally posted by: JeffMD
noxxic, remembering the addresses of the specific servers (and going through them all looking for working server) is a pain, whats worse is the heavy downloaders (read, abusers) KNOW this and so when the loader routes people to bad servers, it dosnt take long for OTHER servers to come down due to high load.

Remembering the addresses? I just put them into NewsBin and let the program choose the server for me, no pain at all.
For me UNS has been great since I usually get 1.4 to 2 mbps and download between 120GB and 180GB a month which is pretty good for less than $15.

 

[flashbak]

Well folks I just cancelled my subscription with 100ProofNews.com. It's been almost a day of checking it out and I have to say the performance is terrible! Completeness isn't very good but the speed is horrible. In the middle of downloading some files on numberous occasions it all of a sudden just starts to crawl. I highly suggest you stay clear! Once again, too good to be true. turns out to indeed be to good to be true!

 

[mrbass]

Originally posted by: GagHalfrunt
Easynews is great too, but I found the retention to be too good. Since they have 30 day retention in most binary groups it takes forever to get all the headers.

xnews.....right click on binary group..and choose 'open special' select the range of headers. I only have 512MB so I usually won't load more than 500,000 headers with 4 groups open. I've hit 800MB and my page file flies thru the roof.

btw anyone know how to use easynews zip manager? I tried it out but it renames the files
Renames them from file.part01.rar to file_part01.rar
file.part02.rar to file_part02.rar

Can't FSRaid rename them automatically? I had to manually rename 142 files...never again. Gonna stick with xnews unless someone has a tip perhaps.

 

[busmaster11]

Well, after checking out all the links I've decided to give newshosting a try. I've currently got easynews, and have absolutely no complainst other than pricing...

 

[JeffMD]

on easynews, I avoid accessing binarie groups via news reader (I use xnews too). The web interface is a ton easier, also remember guys, you pay for the data you download. If you download binaries over NNTP, youll be downloading the bigger more bloated yenc, Base64, and UUenc versions of of the file, while on the web server, your downloading the file allready decoded.

 

[MustISO]

I've been going through usenet services for the last few months. I love easynews but I'd go through 6GB in a day. Same with Giganews. I tried Athenanews which was horrible as far as speed although two days out of 30 they had decent speeds. I signed up for a free 50MB/day from astraweb and they're good (fast) but the retension is not there. 100proof just plain blew. Their retension is not that great and the speeds are pretty low. Usenetserver is good but they do have all kinds of server problems. Gotta love the unlimited downloads! If easynews would do something like 10-12GB for $13.95 I would sign up for good.

 

[DavidKing]

btw anyone know how to use easynews zip manager? I tried it out but it renames the files
Renames them from file.part01.rar to file_part01.rar
file.part02.rar to file_part02.rar

Can't FSRaid rename them automatically? I had to manually rename 142 files...never again. Gonna stick with xnews unless someone has a tip perhaps.

Same for me. Just get the .par file and use mirror.exe. It asks you if you want to rename and will do the whole process automaticly. I don't think Smartpar does this yet. If you have all the files, there is no need to rename at all. When winrar asks for a missing file, just select browse and select the wrong named version. Winrar doesn't care, it just needs to know where its at.

Originally posted by: JeffMD
on easynews, I avoid accessing binarie groups via news reader (I use xnews too). The web interface is a ton easier, also remember guys, you pay for the data you download. If you download binaries over NNTP, youll be downloading the bigger more bloated yenc, Base64, and UUenc versions of of the file, while on the web server, your downloading the file allready decoded.

Only if you are using Easynews as your sole Newsgroup service. If your ISP gives you any portions at all (incomplete or not), you should always take the free stuff and just use easynews for fills. My ISP only misses a few parts to each binarie (and completes very few). No point wasting my easynews bandwidth downloading an entire file if my free access has 75-90% of it.

 

[JeffMD]

For the most part, I end up downloading eithe par files (nameing dosnt matter) or entire missed episodes from easynews, so file names arnt a problem. if I am downloading like half a movie on easynews and need file to be renamed, FSraid renames them easily.

I dont worry about filling missing POST only. if a rar archive is missing post, i'll grab the 10-14 meg zip from easynews, i dont sweat the small change. Though sometimes in xnews, if the headers are complete but for some reson the post are missing, I will usualy right click and change the server used to easynews and download it that way. Xnews rocks.

 

[SamSoccer7]

Hey everyone, I just started easynews and was wondering about downloading past tv show episodes. I'm pretty saavy, but some of these file types and things like YENC and PAR at the ends of some of the titles are confusing me. Is there a FAQ or can someone decipher some of these things for me? Thanks.

 

[Crucial]

Easynews users, dont forget that if you run the united devices distributed computing program you can earn free gigs. For every 15 days cpu time you earn 1 gig. It doesnt seem like much but it adds up quick if you have multiple computers.

UD link

You have to remember to sign up for the easynews team before you start earning gigs. Easynews rocks, no incompletes _ever_, awesome speed, and great retention. I use my RR news group for the first part of what I want and fill the rest with my easynews account. It's like having an InterneTivo.

EDIT: more info about it here. http://www.easynews.com/cancer/

 

[Lars]

Originally posted by: SamSoccer7
Hey everyone, I just started easynews and was wondering about downloading past tv show episodes. I'm pretty saavy, but some of these file types and things like YENC and PAR at the ends of some of the titles are confusing me. Is there a FAQ or can someone decipher some of these things for me? Thanks.

best newsgroup guide I found so far

 

[SamSoccer7]

Thanks Lars, that's a great FAQ and helps a lot. I'm well on my road to saying goodbye to Kazaa and WinMX

 

[mrbass]

Alright I'm a convert...I'm switching from smartpar to FSRaid for sure. Also that 255MB recommended limit cache thing at easynews. Well I downloaded 680MB zip and it worked. So these are the programs I use:
xnews, fsraid, quicksfv, winrar, and isp news server and easynews for fills and gotta have it quick stuff.
That's a freaking excellent faq. Added it to my bookmarks.

 

[DavidKing]

Originally posted by: mrbass
Alright I'm a convert...I'm switching from smartpar to FSRaid for sure. Also that 255MB recommended limit cache thing at easynews. Well I downloaded 680MB zip and it worked. So these are the programs I use:
xnews, fsraid, quicksfv, winrar, and isp news server and easynews for fills and gotta have it quick stuff.
That's a freaking excellent faq. Added it to my bookmarks.

The 255MB is new, it used to be 1 gig. I have often downloaded full 700MB disc and have never had a problem. Just make sure your cache is bigger than the file you are downloading so you can resume (just in case). It wouldn't hurt if you added the free 50MB Teranews.com (after $4 start up) to your setup, for the rare occasion when easynews misses one. Then you certainly will not have any problems getting everything you want.

 

[witold]

My DSL provider offers bin newsgroups at no extra charge.

I basically have the thing running 24/7, downloading at about 1.1 Mbit/second, day and night. I'm paying $90/month (all ports open, static IP, etc) but I think I'm getting my money's worth... hehehehe...

The provider is Altantech in No Va.

Witold

 

[ledorky]

I remember when Dwight from usenetserver had to respond to a ton of complaints about his services.
I got a coupla free months before because their service was very much like 100proofnews.
It was down, then up. Servers would download headers then the damn files won't download ...etc etc.
Plus they charged quite a bit for their (lack of a) service too. I was (painfully) with them for about 2 years
until I discovered MUCH better services.
I re-signed for about 2 months. Definitely has improved but I still noticed downtimes and even when I hardcoded the IPs
onto specific servers, the same ol' problems occasionally resurfaced. They're very good for the heavy
downloaders but they do miss the occasional parts on a regular basis hence for postings w/o pars, you're
likely to be waiting for a posting of your missing .rxx. One thing I didn't like was about 4-5 day retention for
the "big" newsgroups out there. Not good enough for a premium service IMO. I quit this month and
concentrated mainly on easynews. Contrary to the post above me, easynews does get hiccups on a very
rare basis. I've been with them for about a year and a half now (after quitting from usenetserver, then
giganews) and would highly recommend them as a "fills" server. That web-based engine can't be beat.
As for renaming the files, go to google and get yourself a file renamer freeware program. They do the job
well even if it's just a few extra steps for you. Much better than manually renaming them methings ...