Holy Cow Batman, Vista can be fast...

[Adam Albright]

This is mainly of interest to people that use Agent as their news
reader and download multi-part large files. I have used Agent for more
years than I can remember and till yesterday haven't upgraded for a
long time. Shame on me.

Geez... boy, did they improve it!

I heard good things about version 4.2, (tuned for Vista) so had to try
for myself, only $15 for a upgrade. They totally redid the interface
from what it was years back, but added a lot of really cool features
like support for multiple threading within a single instance.

I have broadband and I use a premium news server, so your results may
not be as super.

Under the old version of Agent I thought it was smoking if it even
just rarely ran at about 35 MB a minute, which is pretty fast file
transfer over the Usenet even with broadband since the premium news
server I'm using typically has 25,000 or more connections going.

Today I set a new speed record, a whopping 1.1 MB a second! That's
right; over a MB a second transfer speed, in part since Agent now will
do multi-threading with just one connection, so it was doing up to
nine downloads off the same news server (they allow up to 10
connections) at once without me having to run multiple instances or
set anything special up. That delivered a blistering fast 64 MB a
minute download speed meaning it took me just a tad over 3 minutes to
download a 19 minute movie weighting at about 170 MB. Not bad
performance. ;-)

Just curious... anybody getting similar performance with other news
readers/news servers?

http://www.usenetserver.com/networkstatus.html

Of course it don't hurt if the news server farm is outputing close to
20 gbps.

 

[Tiberius]

Thanks for the heads up, I will try it at once...

For some laughs Im reposting the 12 ways to make vista fast

1. drop it off the empire state building, you will have g accelaretion minus
air friction. Use an aerodynamic case.
2. Stuff it inside a nuclear cannon and pull the trigger.
3. Place on top of a Saturn 3 stage rocket and hurl it into space
4. Place it inside the CERN particle accelerator
5. Send it inside a black hole where it will accelerate close to the speed
of light
6. Place it inside a small time machine, so that its time continuum is
faster than ours
7. Take your vista and install it on the computer from the crashed Roswell
UFO that is a trillion trillion teraflops,
it will probably slow it to a crawl, but the dead aliens wont care much.
8. Freeze all humanity in hypothermic stasis using cryogenics until vista
finished loading a program, then when its finished, thaw them. Vista will
not really be faster, but at least you wont die waiting for it.
9. Kill yourself and let your ghost use vista, as a ghost time has no
meaning,
10. Collide vista that is made of matter with anti-vista that is made from
antimatter. The result will be an explosion were all matter is converted to
pure energy in the form of gamma rays traveling at the speed of light.
11. Place Vista on top of a Tesla coil and step up the voltage to 100
million volts. An electrical surge of all the static electricity in the
stratosphere will surge through it and send it to the 5th dimension creating
a teleporting effect similar to the one in the Philadelphia experiment.
12. Install XP and make it into a fake vista with themes and wallpapers...
it will be 100% faster than the real horrid thing.

-thank you

 

[DanS]

This is mainly of interest to people that use Agent as their news
reader and download multi-part large files. I have used Agent for more
years than I can remember and till yesterday haven't upgraded for a
long time. Shame on me.

Geez... boy, did they improve it!

I heard good things about version 4.2, (tuned for Vista) so had to try
for myself, only $15 for a upgrade. They totally redid the interface
from what it was years back, but added a lot of really cool features
like support for multiple threading within a single instance.

They *just* added multi-threaded downloads ?

I have broadband and I use a premium news server, so your results may
not be as super.

Under the old version of Agent I thought it was smoking if it even
just rarely ran at about 35 MB a minute, which is pretty fast file
transfer over the Usenet even with broadband since the premium news
server I'm using typically has 25,000 or more connections going.

Today I set a new speed record, a whopping 1.1 MB a second! That's
right; over a MB a second transfer speed, in part since Agent now will
do multi-threading with just one connection, so it was doing up to
nine downloads off the same news server (they allow up to 10
connections) at once without me having to run multiple instances or
set anything special up. That delivered a blistering fast 64 MB a
minute download speed meaning it took me just a tad over 3 minutes to
download a 19 minute movie weighting at about 170 MB. Not bad
performance. ;-)

Just curious... anybody getting similar performance with other news
readers/news servers?

http://www.usenetserver.com/networkstatus.html

Of course it don't hurt if the news server farm is outputing close to
20 gbps.

Won't hurt either if your pipe is that fat.
64 MB/min = 1.06 MB/sec = 8.5 Mbits/sec + overhead = VERY fast regardless
of the OS.

I'd be interested to see what the difference is between Agent and
NewsLeecher with the same number of D/L threads to the same servers.

Of course, now the obligatory knock about the subject != the content of
the thread. It should have read 'Agent can be fast...', as we are talking
about a completely new version of an application.

 

[Adam Albright]

They *just* added multi-threaded downloads ?

I have no idea... been using a old version of Agent. Old habits are
hard to break. Maybe it was in a earlier version, I was using 1.8
which is oh I don't know about 5, 6 years old? Graf...

 

[Mr. Arnold]

Holy Cow Batman? You must be older than dirt, like me.

 

[Joey DoWop Dee]

For some laughs Im reposting the 12 ways to make vista fast

1. drop it off the empire state building

hey, Hey, HEY!! That's my neighborhood! Go someplace else... go over to Trump
Tower and drop it. No one matters over there.

 

[Guest]

You bring up a good point. Many folks downloaded the betas and RCs of Vista
and either upgraded their PC or after installing Vista put all their old
stuff back on and didn't have a good experience so now the OS "sucks".

The people that paid attention to the minimum requirements (and then
multiplied by their personal standards and used hardware and software that
is compatible or certified have a much different experience.

 

[Tiberius]

why? I dont think Im old and I remember that...

 

[Tiberius]

I thought it had a better interface than the last one I tried..

sorry still horrible and old fashion interface.. lol I think I tried 4.x
before
and droped it because of its interface..
sure its the most powerfull newsreader in the world....

and I should be using it.. but I want a nicer interface...

NOT vistafied please!

 

[Stephan Rose]

This is mainly of interest to people that use Agent as their news
reader and download multi-part large files. I have used Agent for more
years than I can remember and till yesterday haven't upgraded for a
long time. Shame on me.

Geez... boy, did they improve it!

I heard good things about version 4.2, (tuned for Vista) so had to try
for myself, only $15 for a upgrade. They totally redid the interface
from what it was years back, but added a lot of really cool features
like support for multiple threading within a single instance.

I have broadband and I use a premium news server, so your results may
not be as super.

Under the old version of Agent I thought it was smoking if it even
just rarely ran at about 35 MB a minute, which is pretty fast file
transfer over the Usenet even with broadband since the premium news
server I'm using typically has 25,000 or more connections going.

Today I set a new speed record, a whopping 1.1 MB a second! That's
right; over a MB a second transfer speed, in part since Agent now will
do multi-threading with just one connection, so it was doing up to
nine downloads off the same news server (they allow up to 10
connections) at once without me having to run multiple instances or
set anything special up. That delivered a blistering fast 64 MB a
minute download speed meaning it took me just a tad over 3 minutes to
download a 19 minute movie weighting at about 170 MB. Not bad
performance. ;-)

Just curious... anybody getting similar performance with other news
readers/news servers?

http://www.usenetserver.com/networkstatus.html

Of course it don't hurt if the news server farm is outputing close to
20 gbps.

Well don't give Vista credit for that. Give the multi-threaded downloading
credit for that. Since 1 file is usually composed of many small parts,
downloading only 1 part at a time is bad for bandwidth since everytime it
has to request a new part the connection sits idle (latency). Multi
threaded downloads allow it to run multiple requests at once so it is
always downloading something and never stalls requesting a new part.

--
Stephan
2003 Yamaha R6

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[Tiberius]

drop it from a space shuttle and hurl it towards the earth....

I hope it burns to dust in the atmosphere

 

[Guest]

And everybody thinks they are a good driver, too.

 

[Mr. Arnold]

And everybody thinks they are a good driver, too.

And I'll bet the person thinking he or she was young wrote a check or two,
maybe more, that the body couldn't cash.

 

[GeraldF]

This is mainly of interest to people that use Agent as their news
reader and download multi-part large files. I have used Agent for more
years than I can remember and till yesterday haven't upgraded for a
long time. Shame on me.

Using old newsreader Gravity by MicroPlanet. It used to
take approx 1 minute to download 1000 headers. In vista
it taks about 2 seconds.

 

[MICHAEL]

Well, a lot of people buy new computers with more powerful hardware,
a clean installed Vista OS, no years worth of junk, and just make the
ignorant assumption that it's all so much faster because of Vista.

You can have a faster, better performing, and more stable computer
by just doing a clean install of XP. Some users could actually do a
clean install of XP, and since many XP computers came with 512MB (or less)
of RAM up to 1GB of RAM, bump it up to 2GB- those folks would feel like
they had a brand new machine, too. Heck, just updating an old video card
can make a huge difference. Doing one or all those things would be cheaper
than buying a new computer.... and it would more than likely have a big impact
on performance. Done without having to make the leap to Vista.


-Michael

* PNutts:

 

[Charles W Davis]

Michael,

Many users can make a few hardware changes that you mentioned at low cost.
However, those that must take their machines into a shop to have more memory
and a new video card will pay almost as much as a new machine that exceeds
the basic requirements for Vista Home Premium.

 

[MICHAEL]

I don't disagree, Charles. However, folks do have options and there
is absolutely no overwhelming reason to move to Vista. Updating what
they have and/or clean installing XP can provide them with a "new machine"
feel. That route also greatly reduces the risk of programs not working or
hardware failing to work properly, and they don't have to get used to an
OS that will throw them a few curve balls.

Right now, the only time I would ever suggest that a user move to Vista
is if they absolutely needed a new computer. Even then, having XP put
on that new machine might still be their best bet.


-Michael

* Charles W Davis: