Powergrab 2.6 has been acting kinda funny on me lately.

November 3, 2006 6:43 PM

Best usenet binary newsgroup reader?

For WinXP. Bonus points for being free, or a one-time outlay. I'd rather not subscribe to a service (I'm quite happy with my premium provider and I haven't really minded downloading headers).

posted by porpoise to computers & internet (13 comments total)

I don't do a lot of binary downloading and wouldn't consider myself an expert, but I am very happy with xnews.
posted by buggzzee23 at 6:49 PM on November 3, 2006

I happen to like newsbin.
posted by yeoz at 6:54 PM on November 3, 2006

Ditto on newsbin. I registered one or two major versions ago, and have been able to use the same reg for the latest version.

I like how it supports .nzb files (not sure if all binary readers do) and the current version can automatically put .par files into a 'scratch' area, so you don't DL files you don't have to, but if you need it, it's quickly available.
posted by blind.wombat at 7:20 PM on November 3, 2006

newsbin seconded. Works pretty well under Linux with Wine, even.
posted by xiojason at 7:23 PM on November 3, 2006

er, thirded i guess.
posted by xiojason at 7:23 PM on November 3, 2006

Fifthed.
posted by filmgeek at 7:27 PM on November 3, 2006

ditto buggzzee23 - xnews is very good for binaries, makes it painless to browse a group and mark the files you want. Xnews then does the rest unattended, so all you need to do is copy the binaries to your player (ebook reader, in my case). Xnews is not really good for actual news "reading", though, it's targeted specifically at binaries.
posted by anadem at 7:28 PM on November 3, 2006

Newsleecher has been my favorite for a few years now. I used Newsbin for a while, but Newsleecher blows it out of the water, in my opinion. Pair that with a good unlimited bandwidth Giganews account, and you've got a 100 day index of all binaries posted to Usenet. Doesn't get any better than that.
posted by colemanm at 8:39 PM on November 3, 2006

I've used newsleecher for the past few years. It does everything I need. Find a nice place for nzb files and you're golden.
posted by i_am_a_Jedi at 6:39 AM on November 4, 2006

Newsleecher.
posted by unmake at 8:09 AM on November 4, 2006

easynews has a wonderful web interface which removes the need for a newsgroup reader. it's made my life a lot easier, but may or may not be what you want/
posted by ascullion at 10:36 AM on November 4, 2006

Hey thanks everyone!

I found another copy of Powergrab 2.6 (albeit, an RC1) and it seems to be all hunky dory now. Cosmic Wolf/the guy who wrote PG doesn't seem to be maintaining PG anymore.

I think the problem was that I hard end-tasked my previous Powergrab while scanning a newsgroup - and even after deleting and re-adding the group (and deleting all the files on my HD in the data folder) it kept scanning, rescanning, re-scanning, and re-re-re-re-re-scanning when I tried to scan the group again. Wierd.

I took a look at Pan which seemed promising but the installation package was missing a file for me (even after downloading the GTK package). (I came across it googling for PG and found a forum post advocating migrating away from PG as it was no longer maintained.)

I did try Newsbin but saving binaries to specific folders on-the-fly was a pain-in-the-ass. I do, however, really miss being able to tell the newsreader to limit the number of entries to scan in each group that it offered. I didn't try the nzb compatibility, though. However, I really like the ability to put groups into categories in PG which wasn't available in newsbin. The sort-order was kinda confusing but I figure that's just an issue of familiarity.

I didn't really take a look at Xnews as Newsbin was so promising, and I got the other version of PG to work out before I went and tried Xnews.

I considered NewsLeecher but Giganews was more expensive than my current premium provider (Astraweb). However, as it's 'affiliated' with Giganews, the deal's pretty attractive if my useage patterns (and my ISP's laisez faire in regards to how it calculates bandwidth useage of the customers it totally rips off ["Xtreme high speed" customer]) made Giganews a better deal than Astraweb.

I was aware of easynews... but it just isn't for me (the subscription model).
posted by porpoise at 8:25 PM on November 7, 2006

I just discovered a small non-install client SABnzbd
It has a web interface, and what I like best about it is that it does EVERYTHING for you: check file integrity, repair files, unpack/join, move file to a completed folder and finally delete the parts. The initial setup is a bit harder, but after that you dont have to modify anything. Great proggy!
posted by victorashul at 10:30 PM on January 16, 2007