Best Usenet Service?

radiospan

I've never used Usenet before, but I'm thinking of signing up for the 3-day trial of Giganews. Are there any other similar free trials?

What features are important from a supplier?

Once I've signed up, what's the best way to search the servers? Will Giganews have its own search, or will I have to use a newzleech type site?

stanley1

Thundernews has newsrover included in subscription package, it has search engine built in but does not allow posting.

HTH

Sponge Bob

usenetserver.com

Mr E

www.easynews.com
I've been using them for over 5 years.

They don't have a trial, but $10 is about €7.90 and you can cancel any time you want.

DingDong

I use newshosting.com I find them good and never had any problems with them. $189.95 for the year is a good price too.
www.newzleech.com and www.binsearch.info are good for getting your NZB's and their both free.

zAbbo

Giganews and combine it with Newzbin

I get full speeds from giganews's european server, on any connection I've used from 8Mb down to my BT 3Mb.

The easiest way to understand it, is that paying for giganews is for access to the usenet servers, while newzbin allows you to easily search and download from those servers.

I recommened a client which supports the NZB format such as Unison (mac) or NZB-o-Matic Plus (windows)

Sad Professor

+++ support for Easynews. I've been with them for about 3 years.

zAbbo

Sad Professor wrote:

+++ support for Easynews. I've been with them for about 3 years.

retention and speeds are nowhere near as good as Giganews, thats why I switched.

Web interface is a useful feature though.

Stokolan

I left Giganews and moved to usenetserver costing me half the price for just as good a service.

squire23

I;m joining the whole Usenet thing a bit late but I was wondering is GigaNews still the standard for most Ireland users?

DingDong

hitnews.eu looks great and works out the cheapest going at the moment

radiospan

I've been on Giganews since for about six months and it's been excellent. I'm going to shop around for a better price when my next bill is up. I'd like something with good retention though, I think Giganews' 200 days is probably among the best out there.

Cabaal

squire23 wrote: »

I;m joining the whole Usenet thing a bit late but I was wondering is GigaNews still the standard for most Ireland users?

Its nothing to do with being standard its down to service levels and price

Stokolan

Usenetserver costs $15 a month but if you pay for 3 months you get it for $40. which would work out about 26 - 27 euro for the 3 months. which aint too bad of a price. They have 100 day retention and ssl is included in the price. I never had any issues with them.

DingDong

hitnews.eu is 36 euro for 6 months great value. I'm paying 120 odd with newshosting.com for a year wish I had of seen the other offer first.

watty

It entirely depends what you are looking for. If it is the text only discussions that Usenet was invented for some ISPs have a suitable nttp server (news server) that you can connect to free. Also I think possible via some Web based Yahoo/Google services.

Usenet is a terrible way to distribute binaries. There is rarely any server moderation so text is full of obnoxious posts and spam and Binaries could be anything.

I use Thunderbird as Usenet Text reader (but very rarely now). Forums like here are much better nowadays than newsgroups due to the lack of spam etc from Moderation.

NTTP, Usenet and Newsgroups are essentially the same thing. If you are posting in traditional discussion groups make sure your return email address is fake, your signature works, you download a patch so Outlook quotes properly (or better still use Thunderbird) and you trim original posts if long and reply at bottom not top. Otherwise don an asbestos coat.

CivilServant

Do you really think the OP is looking for a paid service for text? Eh... no, its for binaries all the way. Usenet has been around for so long now, the servers have adapted to the main reason usenet is used now, and thats for binaries only.

I tried usenetserver after three years with Giganews, and the thing that annoyed me was there was no european server for usenetserver, which meant using several threads to max out my connection. It was not as reliable, and now the retention is half that of Giganews. Giganews is the best, no ifs, ands or buts about it, everything else is a compromise. Happy to say I'm back with Giganews again, and I don't think I'll be going anywhere else in the long run.

watty

I assume nothing.

Esp since P2P is more popular for binaries. It's *IS* a bit "late" for binaries via Usenet and potentially less private.

Nehaxak

Usenet was always the medium whereby "scene" releases first appeared (outside of BBS's) and it still holds true to this day. P2P (torrents etc.,) merely takes the releases from Usenet and distributes them onward. Usenet is still the place to get the stuff first, you just need to know what to search for and where to look as otherwise it can be a complete nightmare to a user new to newsgroups.

Saving grace with newsgroups for binaries (of whatever sort) is that it's download only and no forced sharing so if someone is interested in pirate material, at least they're just pirating to themselves and not activley participating in distribution, unless of course they also upload, which is their choice to do so.

As someone else said, Usenet is used these days really just for binary transmissions with a huge bulk of that taken up with music, video and software, porn also but not as much as it used to be as the web is a better means for porn transmission seeing as how it's generally not illegal, just age restricted - whereas piracy is illegal and Usenet remains the best place to get what you wanted from it.

Not condoning piracy in any way, just saying the way it is these days with Usenet. Text based groups with logical discussions are few and far between (apart from a coupe of the science groups maybe) due to forums taking over a long time ago as a better way of continuing discussions away from spam.

joePC

usenext.com

14 day unlimited download trail

L31mr0d

I use newshosting.com, $14.95 p/month for unlimited compared to giganews.com's $24.99 for unlimited. Sure the retention is better, but things get bumped frequently enough that anything more than a 2 month retention isn't needed.

blobert

Hello,

Just resurrecting this thread to ask opinions.

Have been using Hitnews.EU which was great value at €6 per month for unlimited downloads.

I got an email from them today to say they are upping the price for international customers to about €11 a month with their new service:

http://www.xennews.com/

Does anyone know of anywhere cheaper than this, having had a look at Giganews and the other main competitors prices I'd forgotten what a great deal I was getting.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks

MHP

Astraweb?

http://www.news.astraweb.com/

radiospan

Any other suggestions? Is there anything for around €6 a month, like Hitnews used to be (it's €12.50 now!)

DingDong

Astraweb is $11 dollars a month
Link
or
http://www.xlned.com/

Never used either but xlned looks really cheap from 2.21euro a month!

MHP

MHP wrote: »

Astraweb?

http://www.news.astraweb.com/

+1


Been using them for 6 months now and are top notch.



Usenet4eva