News Servers

April 25, 2006 5:31 PM

My ISP will be discontinuing news services at the end of May. They are doing this because Giganews is increasing their fee to my ISP to the point where their news service would be offered at a loss. Who do you use as a news server? I download both text and binaries.
posted by Raybun to Computers & Internet (21 answers total)

Easynews. You can sign-up for one week (or download a GB) and if you're not satisfied, you will not be charged. I highly recommend the service. Fast speeds, decent web-based access, and it's only $10 a month.
posted by purephase at 5:40 PM on April 25, 2006

I use Giganews. Good retention, reasonable prices for what you're going to want.
posted by kuperman at 5:44 PM on April 25, 2006

I also love Easynews. Coolest features: encrypted SSL access to their web and nntp servers, and their unpromoted global search (members-only link, of course), and unused gigs in your account roll over to the next month.
posted by zsazsa at 5:59 PM on April 25, 2006

I use Newsreader.com and have been satisfied.
posted by kindall at 6:01 PM on April 25, 2006

We use Newsguy. Decent to good retention even in the busiest binary groups, rollovers, etc. (I use Newsguy in preference to the newsgroup feed that comes with my ISP. That's partly because Mr R d/ls a lot of binaries, but also because the newsgroup feed from my ISP doesn't have the retention or completeness of Newsguy.)
posted by jlkr at 6:25 PM on April 25, 2006

news.individual.net rocks. I've been using usent since 1994 and I've never had a news-server that was so reliable, with essentially no missing posts, where my posts always show up immediately, etc. And a great deal, too: 10 Euros per year.
posted by winston at 6:27 PM on April 25, 2006

oh, and news.individual.net has great spam-filtering too.
posted by winston at 6:28 PM on April 25, 2006

winston: they have no binaries on that one.

I've used both UseNext and EasyNews. I recommend EasyNews, and do not recommend UseNext. They have a weird slow buggy .NET client for downloading.
posted by evariste at 6:37 PM on April 25, 2006

Easynews for binaries.
posted by rxrfrx at 6:40 PM on April 25, 2006

zsazsa writes "Coolest features: encrypted SSL access to their web and nntp servers..."

Very cool, I didn't know that. Thanks.
posted by purephase at 7:15 PM on April 25, 2006

"Coolest features: encrypted SSL access to their web and nntp servers..."

I've been an Easynews member for years, and I'm dumb, so I have to ask: what does this mean?
posted by Doug at 7:37 PM on April 25, 2006

I have been happy with Giganews. $12.99 for 25gb. They have an unlimited package as well.
posted by drstein at 8:06 PM on April 25, 2006

Doug, it means if you don't want your ISP or your boss to know what you're posting or getting from Usenet, you can use the SSL server, just as ecommerce sites use SSL to keep others from sniffing your credit card info. Here's the pertinent EasyNews FAQ entry. SSL access to Usenet through a provider that doesn't keep logs like Easynews is a pretty foolproof way to not get caught for getting the many things Usenet binary groups are famous for, for better or for worse.
posted by zsazsa at 8:17 PM on April 25, 2006

Easynews.

Totally satisfied member for nearly 6 years now (before that I was a Giganews customer).

I am continually astounded at what a great service they provide.
posted by fishfucker at 9:25 PM on April 25, 2006

it has to be easynews, they are wonderful
posted by ascullion at 12:14 AM on April 26, 2006

I like UseNetServer. Been using it for years, never a single problem.
posted by antifuse at 4:36 AM on April 26, 2006

Response by poster: What is the Global Search feature that zsa zsa mentions?
posted by Raybun at 4:39 AM on April 26, 2006

I am very happy with EasyNews. They have all the newsgroups I want, the global search is very handy for finding MP3s, and the rollover quota means I have saved up 206 GB (which is bigger than my hard drive so essentially unlimited).
posted by smackfu at 5:56 AM on April 26, 2006

Another vote for EasyNews.
posted by NewGear at 7:36 AM on April 26, 2006

Raybun, here is a saved copy of the EasyNews global search. Basically it lets you search all the binary groups by any of those fields, and then put what you want into a .ZIP file for easy web downloading, or generate an .NZB file for downloading with an NNTP client. Extremely handy.
posted by zsazsa at 8:58 AM on April 26, 2006

I've been using Newscene for the last 5 years or so...
posted by Arthur Dent at 1:40 PM on April 26, 2006