Any newsgroup reader recommendation(s), please?

[jim]

Now that Google has finally and utterly loused up its Newsgroup reader, please can anyone suggest a workable alternative?

Yes, I have tried the 'new Google Groups' and that is even worse IMHO.

Before Google /groups came on stream I used my then ISP's (Demon) reader. With that one I had to save all the threads of interest on my own PC, which meant:

(1) I had to spot them &/or save all threads from a particular group.

(2) I did not have any means of retrospectively searching for other topics which later interested me.

(3) I had to write my own archiving programs.

Google groups WAS ideal because:

1. It provided a scrollable list of recent postings from the VERY FEW groups that interest me - and even within those there are very few topics of interest.

1. Picking on a topic showed a hierarchical list of threads

2. Provided a searchable archive of postings. No need to save anything locally unless of exceptional relevance or interest.

1. There was no need to monitor postings on a daily basis. (Holidays allowed!)

So what do posters here recommend as its replacement?

As simple an interface as possible please. Without a pile of computer technical stuff to circumvent. My needs really are simple & reading Newsgroups is not my prime aim in life, useful as they are.

BTW I have, at times, been a regular poster to uk.d-i-y but clicking on my 'Google Profile' attached to thread, shows the b*st*rds now have even lost my posting history. sic transit gloria

Many TIA for all thoughts.

[Andy Burns]

Well, first you'll need an account on a usenet server, if your ISP has one use that, or spend ?10/year for news.individual.net, or get a freebie from e.g. eternal-september.org

Then you'll need software, there's Agent for a price, and several freebies, I'd say avoid Windows Live Mail (specifically the latest version) use Outlook Express if you must, but look at Thundebird, Pan Gravity etc ...

Quite a few use Thunderbird and/or eternal september, it's not the best, but good enough ...

[Mentalguy2k8]

I use Windows Mail and it works fine. Sign up for a free eternal-september account and you're away.

[Andy Burns]

You're using v6, it's reasonably well behaved (as is v14) the real problem is the latest "Live" version (v15) which makes no attempt to quote the message being replied to, making life difficult for everyone else ... I filter out all messages send using v15.

[Mentalguy2k8]

I can't speak for the Live version as I've never used it, but the "normal" version does exactly what I want it to, albeit with a bit of tweaking of settings. Although in fairness, some messages don't quote properly and I have to insert the >s myself.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , jim writes

What happened to the software you were using with Demon?

Turnpike is currently unaffordable and doesn't work easily with Windows

7 64 bit but older versions may be OK.

Archiving is on your own machine.

regards

[Ian Jackson]

I'm trying Thunderbird in parallel with my normal e-mail/news client. It needs a few tweaks, and it has a few minor limitations, but it's easy to use, and I quite like it.

[Martin Brown]

Didn't you find wading through vast mountains of dutifully archived spam a bit tedious? Or are the groups that interest you not targeted by the Chinese copy watch/shoes/handbags brigade.

If you are an ex Turnpike user then the transition to Thunderbird (which is free) is not too bad. There is a thread in d.i.s.turnpike about what addins to tack on to get best approximation to TP behaviour.

Of the free servers AOIE is completely free but blocks postings to uk.rec.gardening for reasons that are too arcane to go into. I use Teranews text only (free but requires one time $5 registration) a service which mostly works but sometimes times out on headers.

I suggest you give Thunderbird a try and ask for tips in dis.tp if you get stuck. The main thing about TB is you can set global kill rules to eliminate any chaff, spam and trolls according to taste.

I'd suggest globally killing "@126.com" and "@gmail.com" for a start. With TP you could only filter by each individual newsgroup.

[BartC]

v14 has a habit of forgetting which messages (email or news) have been read, then you think there's something new, and there isn't.

Also (and this has always been the case since Outlook Express), once you 'send' a message (which usually means put into the outbox), see that it needs editing, it will have formatted the text using hard newline characters; editing a paragraph then is a nightmare (you have to merge the lines into one again otherwise it will be all over the place).

And using formatted rather than plain text, you can't quote properly. But in all it does work, and any alternative will it's own problems.

[F]

Thunderbird.

[tinnews]

The amount of unwanted/junk postings when using either eternal september or News.Individual.NET is not an issue. I'm subscribed to

60 or so newsgroups and see only a few junk messages per day.

For a terminal/console based newsreader there's slrn and tin both still being actively maintained (I use tin). There is a cygwin version of tin, slrn is available as a windows .exe file.

[Bob Eager]

Pan.

[stuart noble]

Kind of vindictive isn't it? I find GMail pretty useful, and I'm quite happy for Google to take over the world if their stuff works. Alas, some of it is too clever for its own good.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I use thunderbird and albasani.net as a feed. Its good enough..not ideal but it allows me to 'dissappear' stuff I have read, view a live thread and filter out Drivel, Rod speed and probably dennis and harry soon enough.

I also prefer to not leave my emails on other peoples servers ..where overworked and underpaid sysadmins may just decide to leak them to the Sun.

Thunderbird is set to make the maximum time on the mail server just 5 minutes, and its my own server these days as well. So I am that sysdamin :-)

[Andy Burns]

A lot of junk originates from googlegroups, but enough valuable stuff too, so I don't block it (but secretly, I wish the valued posters would stop using it so I could block it!)

[Mike Barnes]

BartC :

That's regarded as *working*?

Jeez.

I suspect the OP would do better dusting off his old copy of Turnpike.

[Martin Brown]

Gmail is a *MAJOR* source of Usenet abusive trash and Google refuses to act against spammers so anyone posting with it deserves not to be seen.

For good measure they also archive every last bit of it for posterity which was the point I was making about Google groups for Usenet. They have also seriously broken the archive indexing in past couple of years.

Bring back DejaNews!

[BartC]

It's still a lot more comfortable to use than a typical web-based forum.

For downloading in bulk, then perusing stuff off-line, that was pretty good. But that's really necessary anymore.

[Tim Streater]

MT-NewsWatcher 3.5.3b3 does me fine.

[Ian Jackson]

In message , Tim Streater writes

I hadn't heard of that one before. I gather it's news only. I note that you can simultaneously use multiple news servers (like Demon's Turnpike

- at least per newsgroup), whereas Thunderbird only seems to allow only one. Just out of interest, I might have a look at it.