Please recommend a good newsreader?

[networm]

I read and post to newsgroups daily.

Sometimes I subscribe to a variety of different newsgroups and post in
different newsgroups.

Sometimes in sci.math, sometimes in programming related, sometimes in sports
related, sometimes move on to another nntp server, for example, Micorsoft
News server to ask techinical questions... , etc.

Is there a software can collect what I have post and what other people
replied and present them in front me in an efficient and uniform way, and
with new replies arrival pop-up/notification feature?

Currently I am using Outlook Express. It is not convinient at all.

I post on different groups. Then I have to go back and click on each groups
to see if there are replies to my postings... And a lot of times they don't
get reply. And maybe after 15 days they got reply. I tend to forgot myself.
And some newsgroups are so hot that my postings got washed away in half a
day... then I have to scroll down many message headers to find my own
postings... and a lot of times such searching takes much time. Then I reply
to other people's replies and they reply too and then such tedious procedure
repeats.

If some discussion is meaningful. We'd like to save. But Outlook Express
does not save conversations in a nice-looking way. Maybe I want to save as
PDF. But the layout should be neat and easy to read.

Outlook Express also does not have auto-filling feature. So specify a list
of newsgroups to post is also painful.

Google groups web-based newsreader is a lot better. But still has
shortcomings. The worst shortcoming is it does not allow subscription to MS
newsservers.

Please recommend a good newsreader, thank you so much!

 

[Guest]

Outlook Express which comes shipped with XP has Newsreader capabilities.

 

[Ian Anderson]

I read and post to newsgroups daily.

Sometimes I subscribe to a variety of different newsgroups and post in
different newsgroups.

Sometimes in sci.math, sometimes in programming related, sometimes in sports
related, sometimes move on to another nntp server, for example, Micorsoft
News server to ask techinical questions... , etc.

Is there a software can collect what I have post and what other people
replied and present them in front me in an efficient and uniform way, and
with new replies arrival pop-up/notification feature?

Currently I am using Outlook Express. It is not convinient at all.

<snip>

I use "Forte Agent 3.1/32.783" which I find excellent, but it is not
free.
If you visit the newsgroup: news.software.readers you will find that
many people are using a free news reader known as:
"40tude_Dialog/2.0.15.1" which is also rated very well.

I suggest you have a look in there and you will find plenty of people
able to make recommendations or provide help.

 

[Ian Anderson]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Outlook Express which comes shipped with XP has Newsreader capabilities.

"Networm" said he was currently using Outlook Express and looking in his
headers I see: "X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.2180"

 

[E.Borgers]

I read and post to newsgroups daily.

Sometimes I subscribe to a variety of different newsgroups and post in
different newsgroups.

Please recommend a good newsreader, thank you so much!

Forget about Outlook and its problems Microsoft style, and its absence
of real facilities.
One of the most llexible program for reading and sending News I know
(and I use it since years) is Forté Agent.
Their free program "Free Agent" could give you a good view about the
essential goodies of Agent, before going to the more complete paying
version.

Hope this helps.

E.Borgers

 

[Vanguard \(NPI\)]

If you visit the newsgroup: news.software.readers you will find that
many people are using a free news reader known as:
"40tude_Dialog/2.0.15.1" which is also rated very well.

Geez, is 40tude's Dialog ever going to get out of beta status? From
http://www.40tude.com/dialog/history.htm, "Release history and changes", and
NONE of which list release dates:

Version 2.0.15.1 (Beta 38)
Version 2.0.14.1 (Beta 37)
Version 2.0.13.1 (Beta 36)
Version 2.0.12.1 (Beta 35)
Version 2.0.11.1 (Beta 34)
Version 2.0.10.1 (Beta 33)
Version 2.0.9.1 (Beta 32)
Version 2.0.8.1 (Beta 31)
Version 2.0.7.1 (Beta 30)
Version 2.0.6.1 (Beta 29)
Version 2.0.5.1 (Beta 28)
Version 2.0.4.1 (Beta 27)
Beta 26: This version never saw the public
Version 2.0.3.1 (Beta 25)
Version 2.0.2.1 (Beta 24)
Version 2.0.1.1 (Beta 23)

And where is a NON-BETA version? That is, where is a *stable* version of
this program? Not all users want to be beta testers whether voluntary or
involuntary. From the massive list of fixes in each version, the author
doesn't understand the concept of "beta" versus "alpha". Merely changing
the hundredths digit in the version number does NOT qualify a version as a
beta version.

Also, the link to the "North American" download mirror is dead. The German
mirror seems to be up. I see the author managed to submit his "40tude HTML"
product to download.com. Wonder why his "40tude Dialog" (the newsreader to
which you referred) is not also there.

As for Forte Agent, have they yet supported regular expressions in rules or
to use in scoring (so you could use a rule to automatically exercise against
posts)? Last time I checked, the only place you could use regular
expressions (to test on any header) were in searches. You had to save the
search and then later manually select the saved search, manually exercise
the saved search, manually select the posts found by that saved search, and
then manually select the action to commit against those manually selected
posts. Pretty worthless for filtering posts as opposed to using regular
expressions in rules or scoring (which rules can test to decide at what
score level to commit an action against a post). It took them how many
years before finally supporting multiple servers? Before you had to define
multiple config files and use a shortcut with command-line switches to
specify which config file to use to open multiple instances of Agent to
access multiple servers. I hear in the newest major version that they
finally got around to supporting multiple servers. Since their product only
runs on Windows, it would be nice if they would update their GUI to look
something newer than a product designed to run way back on Windows 386.
Maybe they decided to remove the screenshots of their clunky GUI from their
web site because it was pushing off prospective users, so I can't say if the
newest 3.0 version has a better GUI.

I trialed Thunderbird but it sucks as bad as OE; i.e., its rule set is as
bad, or worse, than OE's. I have trialed Gravity, XanaNews, Xnews,
Newsrover, Newsbin but it's difficult to say which one is for you. Best bet
is to try them and see which one you like for ease of use, intelligible help
and intuitive GUI, and if they have a feature set that meets your need for
potent control. Xnews looked good because I liked its regular expressions
feature with scoring, but found bugs in its GUI and is past its prime, plus
I've heard that it bloats in memory consumption and freezes for NNTP servers
with long retention (i.e., they have LOTS of posts), and, alas, the author
abandoned the newsreader (no updates in over 2 years).

 

[networm]

"Networm" said he was currently using Outlook Express and looking in his
headers I see: "X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.2180"

Yes, I am currently using the one bundled with XP Pro.

 

[networm]

Geez, is 40tude's Dialog ever going to get out of beta status? From
http://www.40tude.com/dialog/history.htm, "Release history and changes",
and NONE of which list release dates:

Version 2.0.15.1 (Beta 38)
Version 2.0.14.1 (Beta 37)
Version 2.0.13.1 (Beta 36)
Version 2.0.12.1 (Beta 35)
Version 2.0.11.1 (Beta 34)
Version 2.0.10.1 (Beta 33)
Version 2.0.9.1 (Beta 32)
Version 2.0.8.1 (Beta 31)
Version 2.0.7.1 (Beta 30)
Version 2.0.6.1 (Beta 29)
Version 2.0.5.1 (Beta 28)
Version 2.0.4.1 (Beta 27)
Beta 26: This version never saw the public
Version 2.0.3.1 (Beta 25)
Version 2.0.2.1 (Beta 24)
Version 2.0.1.1 (Beta 23)

And where is a NON-BETA version? That is, where is a *stable* version of
this program? Not all users want to be beta testers whether voluntary or
involuntary. From the massive list of fixes in each version, the author
doesn't understand the concept of "beta" versus "alpha". Merely changing
the hundredths digit in the version number does NOT qualify a version as a
beta version.

Also, the link to the "North American" download mirror is dead. The
German mirror seems to be up. I see the author managed to submit his
"40tude HTML" product to download.com. Wonder why his "40tude Dialog"
(the newsreader to which you referred) is not also there.

As for Forte Agent, have they yet supported regular expressions in rules
or to use in scoring (so you could use a rule to automatically exercise
against posts)? Last time I checked, the only place you could use regular
expressions (to test on any header) were in searches. You had to save the
search and then later manually select the saved search, manually exercise
the saved search, manually select the posts found by that saved search,
and then manually select the action to commit against those manually
selected posts. Pretty worthless for filtering posts as opposed to using
regular expressions in rules or scoring (which rules can test to decide at
what score level to commit an action against a post). It took them how
many years before finally supporting multiple servers? Before you had to
define multiple config files and use a shortcut with command-line switches
to specify which config file to use to open multiple instances of Agent to
access multiple servers. I hear in the newest major version that they
finally got around to supporting multiple servers. Since their product
only runs on Windows, it would be nice if they would update their GUI to
look something newer than a product designed to run way back on Windows
386. Maybe they decided to remove the screenshots of their clunky GUI from
their web site because it was pushing off prospective users, so I can't
say if the newest 3.0 version has a better GUI.

I trialed Thunderbird but it sucks as bad as OE; i.e., its rule set is as
bad, or worse, than OE's. I have trialed Gravity, XanaNews, Xnews,
Newsrover, Newsbin but it's difficult to say which one is for you. Best
bet is to try them and see which one you like for ease of use,
intelligible help and intuitive GUI, and if they have a feature set that
meets your need for potent control. Xnews looked good because I liked its
regular expressions feature with scoring, but found bugs in its GUI and is
past its prime, plus I've heard that it bloats in memory consumption and
freezes for NNTP servers with long retention (i.e., they have LOTS of
posts), and, alas, the author abandoned the newsreader (no updates in over
2 years).

Hi Vanguard,

Looks you have really a lot expieriences in newsreaders...

but I don't care about GUI, I just want a newsreader that can collect back
my posts and present in a integrated place so that I can find my posts
easily and see other people replies easily, instead of scroll down to search
.... on multiple newgroups...

Any more thoughts?

 

[networm]

<snip>

I use "Forte Agent 3.1/32.783" which I find excellent, but it is not
free.
If you visit the newsgroup: news.software.readers you will find that
many people are using a free news reader known as:
"40tude_Dialog/2.0.15.1" which is also rated very well.

I suggest you have a look in there and you will find plenty of people
able to make recommendations or provide help.

thanks a lot IanQ

 

[Ian Anderson]

Geez, is 40tude's Dialog ever going to get out of beta status? From
http://www.40tude.com/dialog/history.htm, "Release history and changes", and
NONE of which list release dates:

<snip>

You snipped where I wrote:
"I use "Forte Agent 3.1/32.783" which I find excellent, but it is not
free."

I trialed Thunderbird but it sucks as bad as OE; i.e., its rule set is as
bad, or worse, than OE's. I have trialed Gravity, XanaNews, Xnews,
Newsrover, Newsbin but it's difficult to say which one is for you. Best bet
is to try them and see which one you like for ease of use, intelligible help
and intuitive GUI, and if they have a feature set that meets your need for
potent control. Xnews looked good because I liked its regular expressions
feature with scoring, but found bugs in its GUI and is past its prime, plus
I've heard that it bloats in memory consumption and freezes for NNTP servers
with long retention (i.e., they have LOTS of posts), and, alas, the author
abandoned the newsreader (no updates in over 2 years).

Thunderbird & Gravity are slowly being developed by volunteers, XanaNews
is a one man show. Newsrover & Newsbin are probably more suitable for
binaries. Anyway you tried them but ditched them all and settled for
"Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.2180"?
Have you tried Forte Agent 3.1/32.783?

From the Forte web page: http://www.forteinc.com/news/
"Released 15-Sep-05. Bulletin. Forté releases Agent 3.1
We are now working on Agent 3.2 with support for multiple POP boxes..."

 

[DanS]

Outlook Express which comes shipped with XP has Newsreader
capabilities.

I thought the OP asked for a recommendation for a GOOD newsreader !!!!

XNews MAY be the deFacto Text news client. (not meaning to start any
arguments.)

http://xnews.newsguy.com/

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I read and post to newsgroups daily.

Sometimes I subscribe to a variety of different newsgroups and post in
different newsgroups.

Sometimes in sci.math, sometimes in programming related, sometimes in sports
related, sometimes move on to another nntp server, for example, Micorsoft
News server to ask techinical questions... , etc.

Is there a software can collect what I have post and what other people
replied and present them in front me in an efficient and uniform way, and
with new replies arrival pop-up/notification feature?

Currently I am using Outlook Express. It is not convinient at all.

I post on different groups. Then I have to go back and click on each groups
to see if there are replies to my postings... And a lot of times they don't
get reply. And maybe after 15 days they got reply. I tend to forgot myself.
And some newsgroups are so hot that my postings got washed away in half a
day... then I have to scroll down many message headers to find my own
postings... and a lot of times such searching takes much time. Then I reply
to other people's replies and they reply too and then such tedious procedure
repeats.

If some discussion is meaningful. We'd like to save. But Outlook Express
does not save conversations in a nice-looking way. Maybe I want to save as
PDF. But the layout should be neat and easy to read.

Outlook Express also does not have auto-filling feature. So specify a list
of newsgroups to post is also painful.

Google groups web-based newsreader is a lot better. But still has
shortcomings. The worst shortcoming is it does not allow subscription to MS
newsservers.

Please recommend a good newsreader, thank you so much!

I prefer Mozilla Thunderbird, myself.

--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH

 

[Leythos]

I read and post to newsgroups daily.

Sometimes I subscribe to a variety of different newsgroups and post in
different newsgroups.

Sometimes in sci.math, sometimes in programming related, sometimes in sports
related, sometimes move on to another nntp server, for example, Micorsoft
News server to ask techinical questions... , etc.

Is there a software can collect what I have post and what other people
replied and present them in front me in an efficient and uniform way, and
with new replies arrival pop-up/notification feature?

Currently I am using Outlook Express. It is not convinient at all.

I post on different groups. Then I have to go back and click on each groups
to see if there are replies to my postings... And a lot of times they don't
get reply. And maybe after 15 days they got reply. I tend to forgot myself.
And some newsgroups are so hot that my postings got washed away in half a
day... then I have to scroll down many message headers to find my own
postings... and a lot of times such searching takes much time. Then I reply
to other people's replies and they reply too and then such tedious procedure
repeats.

If some discussion is meaningful. We'd like to save. But Outlook Express
does not save conversations in a nice-looking way. Maybe I want to save as
PDF. But the layout should be neat and easy to read.

Outlook Express also does not have auto-filling feature. So specify a list
of newsgroups to post is also painful.

Google groups web-based newsreader is a lot better. But still has
shortcomings. The worst shortcoming is it does not allow subscription to MS
newsservers.

Please recommend a good newsreader, thank you so much!

A simple to use, easy to manage Newsreader is Super Gravity, it's worked
for more than 8 years, still does all the proper newsgroup things and is
FREE now.

http://gravity.tbates.org/

 

[Gordon]

I prefer Mozilla Thunderbird, myself.

And you're using an out-of date version!

 

[Spooky]

@yahoo.com says... [snips]

A simple to use, easy to manage Newsreader is Super Gravity, it's worked
for more than 8 years, still does all the proper newsgroup things and is
FREE now.

Gravity is certainly a great little newsreader. But the last time I tried
it, it shared a serious flaw with some of the other free newsreaders that
have been mentioned in this thread - you can't install it as Administrator
and then log in as a limited user and run it. It wants to write to its own
installation directory when it's run. Most people wouldn't notice, since
they run day-in-day-out with administrative or power-user privs, but that's
that just not acceptable to some of us.

Cheers,

Spooky
--

 

[Leythos]

@yahoo.com says... [snips]

A simple to use, easy to manage Newsreader is Super Gravity, it's worked
for more than 8 years, still does all the proper newsgroup things and is
FREE now.

Gravity is certainly a great little newsreader. But the last time I tried
it, it shared a serious flaw with some of the other free newsreaders that
have been mentioned in this thread - you can't install it as Administrator
and then log in as a limited user and run it. It wants to write to its own
installation directory when it's run. Most people wouldn't notice, since
they run day-in-day-out with administrative or power-user privs, but that's
that just not acceptable to some of us.

Yea, it wasn't designed in the days of XP, but you can set permissions
on the folder to allow it access and then limited users can run it.

 

[zeppo]

I thought the OP asked for a recommendation for a GOOD newsreader !!!!

XNews MAY be the deFacto Text news client. (not meaning to start any
arguments.)

http://xnews.newsguy.com/

Yep, I'd have to 2nd your Xnews recommendation. I use Xnews for text newsgroups,
and switch over to NewsBin for my binary indiscretions

I connect to the groups through Newsguy, and in addition to NNTP, they offer a
web-based reader that's pretty nifty.

As an example, it has a feature that allows you to flag a group, thread or
post... and receive a notice when someone replies to any of the above. Networm
had mentioned Google's crappy web interface and the desire to track discussions,
so I thought I'd throw that out there.

~~~~~~~
zeppo

 

[Spooky]

Gravity...]

Yea, it wasn't designed in the days of XP, but you can set permissions
on the folder to allow it access and then limited users can run it.

That works only for a single user though. And Gravity *was* designed in
the days of NT, which certainly had limited users too. But it's still a
nice program if you can live with this shortcoming.

I've discovered that 40tude Dialog 2.0.15.1 (beta 38) can be installed by a
limited XP user into a folder owned by that user (under, say, Documents and
Settings). It shows up in Add/Remove Programs only for that user. So far,
it seems to work well (although I'm darned if I can see how to turn off
overstrike mode in the posting editor).

Followups trimmed.

Cheers,

Spooky
--

 

[Vanguard \(NPI\)]

Looks you have really a lot expieriences in newsreaders...

but I don't care about GUI, I just want a newsreader that can collect back
my posts and present in a integrated place so that I can find my posts
easily and see other people replies easily, instead of scroll down to
search ... on multiple newgroups...

I just click in the Watched column and all posts in that thread get marked
together. I don't need to wait until my post shows up as I can mark the
thread right then. I then click in the header for the Watched column to
sort it so Watched threads are at the top of the list, and they are always
at the top of the list even after new posts arrive, so the order is Watched
followed by other posts in Received order. When I'm done watching a thread
(which is about 5 days after my last post or any replies to it), I click
again in the Watched column (which marks them as Ignored, also useful for
hiding posts), and click again to turn Watching/Ignoring off (so that thread
will get sorted along with the others). In fact, not having a means to
watch a thread of interest was one of the reasons that I quit using some
newsreaders.

 

[Vanguard \(NPI\)]

<snip>

You snipped where I wrote:
"I use "Forte Agent 3.1/32.783" which I find excellent, but it is not
free."

Yeah, so are you implying that the paid version supports regular expressions
in rules or scoring? When I asked other Forte Agent users (that paid), all
they could tell me for support of regular expressions was in saved searches
and how I would have to manually execute the saved search, select, and
manually choose which action to commit. Since I was trialing the various
version of newsreaders, I'm pretty sure it would've been the Agent trial,
not the freebie download (as I recall, it was the same file and you choose
to trial the full version or just install the freebie version).

Thunderbird & Gravity are slowly being developed by volunteers, XanaNews
is a one man show. Newsrover & Newsbin are probably more suitable for
binaries. Anyway you tried them but ditched them all and settled for
"Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.2180"?
Have you tried Forte Agent 3.1/32.783?

Yep, I was looking for something more than just incrementally better. One
requirement, and the biggest one, was support for regular expressions that
could be applied on ANY header (using either the overview headers on the
header-only download or the rest of them when the body got downloaded).
XNews seemed the only that would support regular expressions on any header
which was then used to score a post that you could then decide in a rule to
keep or delete. Once the regular expression were defined in the config file
and the rule defined to trigger on the threshold, I never had to do anything
after that to, say, *automatically* delete posts with "!mail2news" at the
end of the Path header (when the post got downloaded since Path is not in
the overview headers), color code those to warn me when a poster used the
FollowUp-To header (often used by spammers and trolls to disconnect replies
off into *.test groups), or color code those from posters using Google
Groups or Microsoft's CDO interface. Alas, I hit too many GUI bugs and came
back to OE.