Why a newsreader?

[krw]

A "newsreader" is the client software that you run on your computer to read Usnet articles. "Agent" and "Gravity" are examples of "newsREADERS".

A "News server" is the thing in the cloud that the news reader connects to, to serve the articles to your newsREADER. Most newsREADERS are free, with the obvious exception of Agent. News SERVERS include "ThunderNews", "GigaNews", "Individual", and the one run by the makers of Agent, "Agent Premium News". Individual is cheap, about $14 a year, though doesn't have binary groups. ThunderNews is around $7/month, IIRC, and APN is $3/month for 15GB. *ANY* of which is better than Googlie Groups.

You don't need to upgrade. There are many other free news readers, as well.

[Han]

" [e-mail]" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

As mentioned before, Xnews is free. Astraweb has great retention, and I am still using the subscription I paid $10 for in June in 2008. From this subscription of 25GB downloads I have so far used 1 GB.

So this cost me so far less than $0.30/month, and it is fully paid up with 95% of the paid for access still available.

[bob haller]

[e-mail]:

I use FREE AOL, and honestly dont understand what a news reader is..........

it comes up as

I have had my AOL e mail address at least 15 years it works fine and is easy to remember

[SRN]

is..........

One of the advantages of a news reader is that you can pre-select the groups you're interested in reading daily, then when you open the news reader it automatically downloads all the new messages on only the groups you are interested in and displays them a group at a time. Much easier than having to navigate to each group you are interested in like in Google Groups.

[krw]

There are *many* reasons not to use Googlie Groups, but that's not one. GG keeps each newsgroup you're "subscribed" to separate, too. The format is horrid and the tools nonexistent, but it does keep them separate so you can view one at a time.

[SRN]

I'll take your word for it as I have never used Google Groups myself.

[Nil]

On 04 Jul 2011, bob haller wrote in alt.home.repair:

You are mistaken - you don't use AOL to read newsgroups, you are using Google groups. As far as I know, AOL hasn't had its own Usenet service since 2005.

Your email host isn't relevant to this discussion.

[HeyBub]

Hmm. I use Comcast for internet connectivity but Earthlink is my ISP.

Earthlink provides GigaNews as part of its service, no extra charge.

[Man-wai Chang]

Who/What asked you to pay for a newsgroup reader?

At least Thunderbird, Outlook Express, & Window$ Live are free!

[Dan Musicant]

:On Sun, 3 Jul 2011 13:18:28 -0700 (PDT), Higgs Boson : wrote: : :>(Note: I had one of the BEST email clients for years -- Forte Agent. :>Swift, powerful, sophisticated. : :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.

I've been using Agent since it was in beta (when it was free). I bought a version looooong time ago and haven't bothered to upgrade. I'm using

1.93xxx. Does NG and email great, don't know why I'd want to change. There's several newer versions of Agent, but I've got other things to do and spend my money on. I'm pretty sure newer Agent versions would be able to take the data from my current Agent (I've kept a whole lot of that), but don't know if and how I'd move my Agent data over to another kind of email/NG client.

Dan

PS Seems like every time I go to Google Groups for a search it gets clunkier and less useful. Maybe I've just forgotten how to use it, don't know. It's nice for finding things not specific to one newsgroup... or WAS nice!

Email: dmusicant at pacbell dot net