Thread: Newsgroups anyone give any advice?

So im interested to learn some new stuff about news groups anyone give any on advice of best sites to use programs to use etc?

Thanks

Ah, usenet aka newsgroups. The wild, wild west of the internet.

There are a ton of usenet providers. The name to beat is Giganews, but there are many other good providers as well. One nice thing about Giganews is their no questions asked, free trial so that can see exactly what they are all about. For a client, I am partial to Agent. And as Zener mentioned, one of the best usenet search engines is Binsearch.

For a general introduction to usenet, you might want to check out one of my previous posts on the subject.

Provider - Giganews is supposed to be the absolute best usenet provider, but it is pricey. I've used Newshosting and it worked perfectly fine for about $10/month and 1368 days retention. If you go through Usenetreviewz you can usually get an affiliate discount on most of the better ones.

Newsreader - I suggest SABnzbd. It is hard to beat.

Searching - Newzbin and NZBmatrix are both very popular sites, but you end up having to pay for use. I usually check on Binsearch and NZBindex. NzbTvSeeker is also interesting.

And of course, SickBeard for automatic downloading!

I found usenet to be somehow be more complicated to learn than torrents... but once you figure out how everything works it's pretty simple. And no ratios to worry about. lol

My isp currently offers newsgroups so if im understanding what's what i wont need something like giganews?

also what is a good number of connections? this is a whole new world to me haha

Cheers

Originally Posted by Choppers

My isp currently offers newsgroups so if im understanding what's what i wont need something like giganews?

also what is a good number of connections? this is a whole new world to me haha

Cheers

The problem with most ISPs is that newsgroups are typically a low priority for them. And are often barely useable. You may find that they only archive a few weeks or even few days of posts. And may have missing pieces - as content of any size is usually posted in multiple parts. Your client will reassemble these automatically.. but if your ISP doesn't have redundant feed, some of the pieces may be missing. And your ISP may not support enough connections to achieve decent download speeds.

My ISP won't support more then 3 connections. The last time I used Giganews, I had 100 connections. By all means if you find your ISP's newsgroup spool to be useful, then you need not spend any money on a third party vendor. The ISP versions though, IMO, are rarely useable for anything other than casual and undemanding use. YMMV

Originally Posted by copper

The problem with most ISPs is that newsgroups are typically a low priority for them. And are often barely useable. You may find that they only archive a few weeks or even few days of posts. And may have missing pieces - as content of any size is usually posted in multiple parts. Your client will reassemble these automatically.. but if your ISP doesn't have redundant feed, some of the pieces may be missing. And your ISP may not support enough connections to achieve decent download speeds.

My ISP won't support more then 3 connections. The last time I used Giganews, I had 100 connections. By all means if you find your ISP's newsgroup spool to be useful, then you need not spend any money on a third party vendor. The ISP versions though, IMO, are rarely useable for anything other than casual and undemanding use. YMMV

My isp is offering 20 connections for a couple more $$

What do you mean by this?

You may find that they only archive a few weeks or even few days of posts. And may have missing piece