Favorite Newsreader -- and Why

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ll

I'm going to change platforms for email and news.
What is your favorite newsreader, and _why_?
 
ll said:
I'm going to change platforms for email and news.
What is your favorite newsreader, and _why_?
Click to expand...

KNode. Because it does what I need. This information will be useless to
you since you can't run KNode anyway. It is better for you to try
several newsreaders and see which one you like best. Here are a few
aside from Outlook Express:

http://www.forteinc.com/agent/index.php - for Forte
http://www.mozilla.org
http://gravity.tbates.org/
http://www.40tude.com/dialog/
http://xnews.newsguy.com/

And here are a few links discussing how to set up OE for reading http://michaelstevenstech.com/outlookexpressnewreader.htm
http://rickrogers.org/setupoe.htm

Malke
 
I'm going to change platforms for email and news.
What is your favorite newsreader, and _why_?
Click to expand...

Depends?........What do you want to do with it?

Quite a few Newsreaders come to mind that I have used/expiremented with,
some are terrific for "just only" specific features............
--
*************************************************
The Tobes of Hades, lit by flickering torchlight
The netherworld is gathered in the glare
Prince By-Tor takes the cavern to the north light
The sign of Eth is rising in the air.
By-Tor, knight of darkness,
Centurion of evil, devil's prince.

http://www.thekidfrombrooklyn.com/
 
ll said:
I'm going to change platforms for email and news.
What is your favorite newsreader, and _why_?
Click to expand...


Why would we care about YOU changing platforms?
Why do you care what WE use for an NNTP client?
Trial several of them and make YOUR own choice.
 
ll said:
I'm going to change platforms for email and news.
What is your favorite newsreader, and _why_?
Click to expand...


Outlook Express. Because it does everything I want it to do, does it easily,
does it without problems, has an interface that suits my style, and doesn't
cost me anything. I've tried others, but keep coming back to Outlook
Express.

But my view is that asking questions like this doesn't do you any good.
Knowing what *I* like best, or even what all of us here like best, doesn't
do you any good.

You'll likely get votes for almost every newsreader out there. Then what do
you do? Count the votes for each one, and decide that the most popular is
the best?

The newsreader that suits my style best doesn't necessarily suit your style
the best. Instead of asking others for opinions, why not try them yourself,
and see what *you* like best. This is particularly easy to do with
newsreaders, since most are either freeware or shareware, with a free trial
period.
 
I'm going to change platforms for email and news.
What is your favorite newsreader, and _why_?
Click to expand...

Platform would be the OS, not a application running on the same OS.

Anything non-MS will work better and almost always be more secure.

For email I use MS Outlook 2003 because I have a firewall, strip
attachments hitting our exchange server, and understand security well
enough to not get compromised.

For clients, where they don't have the ability to strip attachments out
of their email BEFORE it reaches their computers, I suggest Thunderbird.

For Usenet, since I don't do Binaries, I use Super Gravity, it's been
around for a LONG time and is currently Open Source (free). It runs on
Windows 98 and above, is text based, can decode binaries, allows
different sigs/headers for different groups, multiple servers can be
setup, and you can export/import the control file between machines if
you need too. It is a windows Only application.

If you change from Windows to Linux, there are several options, but PAN
is not one that I like.
 
Malke said:
It is better for you to try several newsreaders and see which
one you like best.
Click to expand...

I was hoping to at least winnow the field down some so that I
would not have to install, and uninstall, lots of randomly
chosen applications.

Depends?........What do you want to do with it?
Click to expand...

Read and send email. Read and post news. Mostly just text-based,
with the occasional attachment, typically a draft word doc to the
work email address or an occasional jpeg to friends or family.
I'll have Word/Outlook/etc on the new computer.
(useless response)
Click to expand...


Ken said:
Outlook Express. Because it does everything I want it to do,
does it easily, does it without problems, has an interface
that suits my style, and doesn't cost me anything.
Click to expand...

Hmmm. One tends to hear a much _broader_ range of views
about OE than about other newsreaders. Why is that?
The newsreader that suits my style best doesn't necessarily
suit your style the best. Instead of asking others for opinions,
why not try them yourself,
Click to expand...

Good point. That's the reason that I asked _why_, so I can
see if I have a similar need/use. I figure that I'll end up
trying a couple. I'd just like that couple not to be random
choices, but some which other skilled users have recommended.

It's not unlike restaurant or movie reviews. I value other
informed opinions, and then I sift them through my own values.
 
ll said:
Good point. That's the reason that I asked _why_, so I can
see if I have a similar need/use. I figure that I'll end up
trying a couple. I'd just like that couple not to be random
choices, but some which other skilled users have recommended.

It's not unlike restaurant or movie reviews. I value other
informed opinions, and then I sift them through my own values.
Click to expand...


I have a particular friend who I've known for many years. If he recommends a
movie or a restaurant, I will almost always give it a try. That's because
when we've compared our experiences over the years, we very often have the
same reaction to movies and restaurants. If I read the movie and restaurant
reviews in our local paper, I always ignore them, because I've learned by
experience that any correlation between the reviewers view of these things
and my own is completely random.

So my point is that getting recommendations from people who you know and
trust to have views similar to yours can be of value. But getting reviews
from a random group of people, like a bunch of strangers on a newsgroup, is
generally a waste of time.

That's my two cents. You're free, of course, to disagree, and go your own
way.
 
Yeah, Ken, but the OP does deserve a little slack here, IMO, since s/he did
ask "_why_" (underlined).
 
Jim said:
Yeah, Ken, but the OP does deserve a little slack here, IMO, since
s/he did ask "_why_" (underlined).
Click to expand...


True, and I did tell him why *I* like OE. I still think, though, that even
if I tell him that it suits my style of working, unless I go into much more
detail than I'm prepared to do in a newsgroup posting, he can't relate that
to his style of working.

I'm not trying to take away any slack from him. I don't really object to his
asking here, and I *did* answer his question as best as I could. I just want
him to realize that *my* opinion, or the opinion of anyone else here, is not
necessarily particularly valuable to him and should be taken with a large
grain of salt..

I guess that what I'm saying is that I hardly ever think asking for opinions
in a useful thing to do on newsgroups. THere are too many of us, with too
many different opinions. Even if you ask _why_, substantiating an opinion
isn't always easy for everyone to articulate.
 
That's fair, Ken - I was just thinking more along the lines of an (naive?)
OP wanting to find out if different readers had different
characteristics/capabilities, how and why these might differ, and why
comparatively some of them might be important to him or her for a variety of
possible reasons. :)
 
Do you need to decode Yenc files? I use Agent-2. Have for years and love it.
They have Agent-3 now which I tried and did not like so put version 2 back
on. It's a bit hard to configure but once you get it figured out it's great.
Free agent is good but will not decode Yenc files unless they have changed it.
Jim
 
(e-mail address removed) AKA ll on 12/11/2005 in
I'm going to change platforms for email and news.
What is your favorite newsreader, and why?
Click to expand...
******************Reply Separator*************************

For mail I use Thunderbird-many options and more secure than OE.
For news I use XanaNews- for the above reasons.
max
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To reply by e-mail change nomail.afraid.org to gmail.com
nomail.afraid.org is setup specifically for use in USENET
feel free to use it yourself. Registered Linux User #393236
 
In
ll said:
I'm going to change platforms for email and news.
What is your favorite newsreader, and _why_?
Click to expand...

IMO for text based newsgroups, I find OE cannot be beat. No other newsreader
comes close to the ease of setting colors to filter groups or an individual
poster. The threading by date is the best of all I have tried for TEXT based
newsgroups. With OEQuoteFix added, it is my favorite for text newsgroups.
For binary newsgroups, I would say Agent in it's latest incarnation is my
personal favorite.
I wouldn't even consider OE as a distant choice for binary newsgroups.
--
Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/outlookexpressnewreader.htm
 
ll said:
Hmmm. One tends to hear a much _broader_ range of views
about OE than about other newsreaders. Why is that?
Click to expand...

Because it's free and comes with the o/s. That means that

a) it has the largest user base, which means the largest potential for
negative comments. Since people tend to be more vocal about negatives, you
get more complaints (everything else being equal).

b) No-one who uses it has any confirmation bias. People tend to want to
think they made the right decision when they buy something (or event
explicitly go out and select, download, and install something), so they have
to be *really* upset before they complain. With OE, you not only do not have
that, you also have the popularity of microsoft bashing.
 
Dennis Edward said:
Because it's free and comes with the o/s. That means that

a) it has the largest user base, which means the largest potential for
negative comments. Since people tend to be more vocal about
negatives, you get more complaints (everything else being equal).

b) No-one who uses it has any confirmation bias. People tend to want
to think they made the right decision when they buy something (or
event explicitly go out and select, download, and install something),
so they have to be *really* upset before they complain. With OE, you
not only do not have that, you also have the popularity of microsoft
bashing.
Click to expand...

Good answer(s).

--
Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE
Please respond in Newsgroup only. Do not send email
http://www.fjsmjs.com
Protect your PC
http://www.microsoft.com./athome/security/protect/default.aspx
http://defendingyourmachine.blogspot.com/
 
Dennis said:
Because it's free and comes with the o/s. That means that

a) it has the largest user base, which means the largest potential for
negative comments. Since people tend to be more vocal about
negatives, you get more complaints (everything else being equal).

b) No-one who uses it has any confirmation bias. People tend to want
to think they made the right decision when they buy something (or
event explicitly go out and select, download, and install something),
so they have to be *really* upset before they complain. With OE, you
not only do not have that, you also have the popularity of microsoft
bashing.
Click to expand...


Very well said!
 
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