What is the purpose of paying for a newsreader? Is it to access news groups? For that purpose, is Google really so awful? Esp, for people who visit only a few NGs?
(Note: I had one of the BEST email clients for years -- Forte Agent. Swift, powerful, sophisticated. But when they discontinued NG access, I went to a Web-based email client. I guess I could still use Agent just for email, but now I'm sot in me ways.
Or do people pay for a newsreader to follow the news, period. If the latter, why not just go to news sources on-line?
Why pay for any of it? There are scores of good free newsreaders and several free text-based news servers. Using a newsreader for USENET is a far better experience than using the clunky Google Groups interface. Besides, Google Groups hasn't been too reliable lately anyway. If I was forced to use the G2 interface it would be time to give up USENET for me.
You not only had one of the best email apps you also had one of the best newsreaders too. In fact Agent was designed primarily for news. Use Agent for news and you will be better off.
Thunderbird (email and news) or SeaMonkey (email, news and browser) both from Mozilla, are free.
Hear! Hear! I am a member of dozens of Yahoo! groups but always have messages as individual emails to my computer, where Thunderbird filters them into folders depending on the criteria I set.
My ISP dropped newsgroups, but I can still get most of them _via_ eternal-september.org, which is free. news.individual.net retains messages longer and costs the vast sum of 10 Euros/year -- about US$14 right now.
No longer. Now you get Windows Live Mail 2011 and it is a poor newsreader. Well, it reads OK, but responding is not so hot. I'm using the 2010 version and it is a bit better than my old OE, but they "improved" it to be about useless for newsgroups.
I tried SeaMonkey. It was too bloated and slow. I use Thunderbird, instead of Agent, for email primarily because it uses a standard file format. I lost almost ten years of email history and address books when I could no longer use the email program I was using.
If you have Individual (I've used them for about six years), why use email for news?
If you don't like Thunderbird's new reading interface (some do, some don't), try the free xananews. Use one or the other for a few days and compare that to your web-based news reading. Unless you only read 1 or
2 groups sporadically, you'll find a news reading client much faster and easier to use because you can customize it to your habits and preferences.
Higgs Boson wrote in news:a634710a-29ff-4619-a1b7- snipped-for-privacy@e26g2000prf.googlegroups.com:
I used to like the old Netscape browser's newsreader interface. But then they upgraded it to uselessness before dumping the whole shebang. The I switched to Xnews. Free, and it does it for me. For discussion of newsreaders you oif course use the newsgroup
For news server I use astraweb. I paid $10 for 25 GB of downloading in June 2008. I have used less than 1 GB. It has binaries out the kazoo, with great retention. Check out
Agent still works fine. What you must mean when you say "they" don't have it, is that your ISP doesn't have its own news server. So you need to enrol/subscribe to one of the others. There are free ones and those that charge 3 or 4 dollars a month.
If you paid for your copy of Agent you can still use it paid mode. If it wants a number, you can email them, give them as much info as you can. Your name might be enough. You gave it to them in the first place if you charged buying it, what your email address was at the time (that might be enough), about when you paid, etc. and they'll send you your pssword number.
I still use version 1.9. I find version 6 a little complicated
Version 6 doesn't have a free version, only a 30 day trial, but version 1.9 is stilll around. Even if you buy ver 6, it's only 39 dollars.
To have features beyond those in the built in email/news client (Outlook Espress, etc.) ___________________
The client (reader) has nothing to do with newsgroup access. Used to be most ISPs provided access; they no longer do so you have to provide your own either by signing up with a free one such as eternalseptember, buying a block from one like Usenet-news or paying a monthly fee to one such as Gigabyte. _______________
Just an FYI..., I tried going to the alt.comp.software.newsreaders newsgroup and there are just 6 messages from 02/26/2011 and 02/27/2011. So, not much going on there.
Thanks, Smitty. What I want is to read Usenet. You said that was a "Newsreader." Which is the term I used in my initial query. Somehow got confused with what you called: "news" like stories of fires and wars and crime and traffic."
Not interested in those.
Everybody on a.h.r seems to think that for newsgroups/forums anything is better than GG Web-based "newsreader. Agent used to offer it free, then went to paid, which I used for a while. Trying to remember why I stopped; maybe because while traveling, I could access Web-based msgs. ???
Somebody pointed out that Agent "Newsreader" CAN still be purchased in various "strengths". I don't mind paying the $2.95 for low volume. But is there something free & GOOD?
Tx to all for helpful input.
HB
(Over at CERN, they're STILL trying to track down MY particle. . Heh, heh, heh!)
I bought Agent long ago. Was using an older version -- I think 2, or a little higher? -- but didn't continue to upgrade because I was not attracted to all the bells & whistles. It's still active on my system.
What operating system do you have on your computer(s)?
I have Windows XP on one and Windows Vista on another.
On the XP computer I use Outlook Express to read Usenet newsgroup messages. I also downloaded and installed a free program called QuoteFix (not sure if it is still available). So, to read the newsgroup messages on this Windows XP computer I am using Outlook Express with QuoteFix.
On the Windows Vista computer I have, I use Windows Mail to read Usenet newsgroup messages. That's because Windows Vista doesn't come with an Outlook Express newsreader like Windows XP did. Windows Mail (which is included in Windows Vista) is similar to Outlook Express.
To get actual access to the Usenet newsgroups, I used two different free Usenet newsgroup servers (I think that's what they are called). The two are:
news://news.eternal-september.org and
news://nntp.aioe.org .
So, in other words, I get access to the Usenet newsgroup messages through the two free services named above (instead of having to pay GigaNews or some other service, and since my ISP's -- Comcast and Verizon -- dropped providing its customers with access to the Usenet newsgroups). Then, once I have access to the Usenet newsgroups, I use the free Outlook Express with QuoteFix and Windows Mail to actually read the messages on the newsgroups.
I use Thunderbird, Version 2.0.0.24 or something like that. I don't care for the Ver 3x, to many bells and whistles. My ISP has newsgroups included but they were having problems and got so slow that I eventually went to
formatting link
it's free, it's fast, it has some limits that I've never exceeded. Text only... And that's how I do it......
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