Which news client should I use?

October 23, 2007 1:22 PM

Which news client should I use? Most of the ones I used are slow. Also it seems when I download mp3s, it shoves them all in the same folder- that's pretty annoying as I have to manually sort them.

Which client should I use?

posted by PowerCat to technology (12 comments total)

XNews is good for grabbing binaries, though it's not designed as a news reader per se. (I don't have a favorite reader, watching for experts' suggestions ...)
posted by anadem at 1:53 PM on October 23, 2007

Newsbin Pro has been my app of choice for many years.

You can set folder options for storing downloaded files, which should clear up the problem you are having.
posted by blind.wombat at 2:35 PM on October 23, 2007

on non-preview, Newsbin is also mainly for binaries...
posted by blind.wombat at 2:36 PM on October 23, 2007

Newsbin is probably your best choice. At one time I liked Newsrover, but that program has a bad bug that the programmer refuses to fix.

If you set a newsgroup to store files in a given directory (which isn't the default), download some messages, and then right-click on the message pane and tell it 'delete all messages', it deletes EVERYTHING in the download folder.... absolutely everything, including stuff it didn't download itself. If you are so foolish as to store your files in your C:\ drive, a right-click delete will destroy your entire installation and all your data.

He refuses to fix this bug, because it's "for speed". So don't use News Rover.
posted by Malor at 2:41 PM on October 23, 2007

I normally use newsleecher.

However, I have been using hellanzb lately because it does post processing. (IE. creates folder for each NZB, does par check/recovery, and decompresses everything into the folder, then deletes the source files).

It also monitors a folder for new NZBs and automatically d/ls then.
posted by mphuie at 3:11 PM on October 23, 2007

I'm pretty fanatical about Google Reader, but a major reason is that I regularly use 3-4 computers, and want something that isn't tied to one machine.
posted by Tomorrowful at 3:45 PM on October 23, 2007

If you're using a Mac (hey, you didn't say!) then I suggest Unison. :-)
posted by drstein at 5:44 PM on October 23, 2007

I don't know if you use nzb files to grab your downloads or not, but if you do, GrabIt is amazing for that. However, it is not the best general purpose newsreader. Grabit does automagically generate subdirs for each newsgroup in its download folder, which is nice. Also makes additional subdirs for each nzb file batch within those subdirs, which is even nicer for organization. Oh, and if you haven't tried using nzb files for downloading yet, I highly recommend giving it a go. It's astonishing how much easier it is.
posted by barc0001 at 6:14 PM on October 23, 2007

Unison completely rules for downloading binaries on the Mac. It even lets you "stream"mp3s to preview them as they download, so you donʻt have to commit to downloading the whole thing.

I just wish there was a decent newreader for the Mac that actually READS NEWS in a half decent way. Every NNTP client for the Mac sucks
posted by melorama at 6:57 PM on October 23, 2007

Definitely Newsbin.
posted by jmnugent at 4:47 AM on October 24, 2007

I used grabit before but it was kind of annoying and slow.
Newsbin is very awesome, and will give hellanzb a go for nzb files.
Thanks!
posted by PowerCat at 6:11 AM on October 24, 2007

2nd-ing newsleecher. You can turn on an option to place files in a folder named after the the group name. I've used newsbin pro before and i prefer newsleecher.
posted by ijoyner at 6:18 AM on October 24, 2007