Looking for a powerful news reader software

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter Veith
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Peter Veith

Hi,

I use Outlook Express as news reader and think that there must be other news
reader software which are simpler to operate but not less powerful.

For example, I have subscriptions for about 30 forums in which I have marked
some topics to see the future referring postings. Every time when I start
Outlook Express I must walk through all my forums to see if some new
postings are available for the interesting topics. A more powerful software
could do this automatically without my interaction.

Does someone know better news reader?

Many thanks in advance.
Peter Veith
 
Peter Veith said:
Hi,

I use Outlook Express as news reader and think that there must be other news
reader software which are simpler to operate but not less powerful.

For example, I have subscriptions for about 30 forums in which I have marked
some topics to see the future referring postings. Every time when I start
Outlook Express I must walk through all my forums to see if some new
postings are available for the interesting topics. A more powerful software
could do this automatically without my interaction.

Does someone know better news reader?
Click to expand...

In OE when I "watch" messages the newsgroup colour changes to red if any
new messages are posted to the watched thread. I can then go straight to
the groups that have messages I have a particular interest in. This is
one reason I went back to OE from Gravity, a powerful newsreader but it
doesn't have that feature.

Gravity: http://www.pricelessware.org/2003/PL2003INTERNET.htm
Xnews: http://xnews.newsguy.com/
Dialog: http://www.40tude.com/dialog/

hth
 
In Peter Veith posted:
Hi,

I use Outlook Express as news reader and think that there must be
other news reader software which are simpler to operate but not less
powerful.

For example, I have subscriptions for about 30 forums in which I have
marked some topics to see the future referring postings. Every time
when I start Outlook Express I must walk through all my forums to see
if some new postings are available for the interesting topics. A more
powerful software could do this automatically without my interaction.

Does someone know better news reader?
Click to expand...

Not for your requirement.

To watch a conversation:
In both e-mail and newsgroups, you can watch a conversation that is of
particular interest you. A conversation is an original message and all
its replies.
In your Inbox or newsgroup message list, select the conversation you
want to watch, and on the Message menu, click Watch Conversation.
If your message list's Watch/Ignore column is turned on, the watch
icon will appear next to all the messages of a watched conversation.
You can customize the color of your watched messages to make them
stand out. On the Tools menu, click Options. On the Read tab, at the
end of the Highlight watched messages with the color line, select the
color you want, and then click OK.

To search messages in a newsgroup:
While in a newsgroup, on the Edit menu, point to Find, and then select
Message in this Folder.
In the Look for text box, type the word (or words) you want to search
for, and then click Find Next.
If your search returns too many results or doesn't give you what you
want, click the Advanced Find button and type in as much information
as possible to refine your search.
You can also find messages by resorting the columns (clicking headings
such as Subject, From, or Sent). Click the column heading to reorder
the messages by that column.

DanlK, FYI Services
www.FYIS.org
Visit our www.FYIS.org/estore
 
Peter said:
I use Outlook Express as news reader and think that there must be
other news reader software which are simpler to operate but not less
powerful.
Click to expand...

Actually, nothing is simpler than Outlook Express. I've tried all the
others and they're WAY harder to come to grips with, so I stayed with OE.
For example, I have subscriptions for about 30 forums in which I have
marked some topics to see the future referring postings. Every time
when I start Outlook Express I must walk through all my forums to see
if some new postings are available for the interesting topics. A more
powerful software could do this automatically without my interaction.
Click to expand...

I don't know what you mean by "walk through all the forums" because you
have to do that with EVERY newsreader to see any updated posts. Perhaps
you mean you don't wish to see all the previous read posts? If so, just
tell Outlook Express to hide all read posts, so when you re-open a forum
you'll only see the new stuff. Do this in conjunction with the "watch
this conversation" feature and you'll even have highlighted posts that
get your attention amongst the newest unread ones.
 
FYIS.org/[email protected] said:
You can also find messages by resorting the columns (clicking
headings such as Subject, From, or Sent). Click the column heading
to reorder the messages by that column.
Click to expand...

And after sorting by column, you can sort of "sub-sort" by View > Sort by >
Watch/Ignore. That will put all your watched messages at the top.

--
dadiOH
_____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.0...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://www.gbronline.com/xico/
_________________________________
 
For example, I have subscriptions for about 30 forums in which I have marked
some topics to see the future referring postings. Every time when I start
Outlook Express I must walk through all my forums to see if some new
postings are available for the interesting topics. A more powerful software
could do this automatically without my interaction.
Click to expand...

40tude will mark topics red if they have new messages in them.
http://www.40tude.com/dialog/
I am new to it myself but so far everything is great.


-Baron Of Hell

"As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there;
He wasn't there again today!
I wish, I wish he'd stay away."
- Hughes Means
 
Peter Veith said:
For example, I have subscriptions for about 30 forums in which I have
marked some topics to see the future referring postings. Every time
when I start Outlook Express I must walk through all my forums to see
if some new postings are available for the interesting topics. A more
powerful software could do this automatically without my interaction.
Click to expand...

If your interested topics are marked as 'watch' (which is different from
'flag'), when you click the 'Synchronize Account' button in the
newsgroup list pane, with 'Don't Synchronize' being selected under the
'Settings' button, OE will ONLY download all the follow-ups to all your
'watched' topics in all your subscribed newsgroups without your
intervention. If there is any follow-up, the belonging newsgroup will
pick up a different color. Default is red.

But that also requires support on the part of the news server.
Microsoft's news server, msnews.microsoft.com, is one, of course.

I only use OE. Does the same functionality exist in other news readers?
 
Paul said:
Peter Veith wrote:
Click to expand...
Actually, nothing is simpler than Outlook Express. I've tried all the
others and they're WAY harder to come to grips with, so I stayed with OE.
Click to expand...

How long have you used OE?

How long did you give any of the others a chance?

There ya go. :)

It's easier to just say in 3rd grade, too, instead of venturing into
that scary 4th grade. ;)
 
40tude will mark topics red if they have new messages in them.
http://www.40tude.com/dialog/
I am new to it myself but so far everything is great.
Click to expand...

There are a number of ways of doing these sorts of things in Dialog.
The "watch" or "keep" filtering. Scoring and colour coding.

An example of the latter is at :

http://members.optushome.com.au/jfweb/diadate.jpg

In this case the yellow reflects a particular poster. Replies to my
posts, or particular threads, can be coloured the same way.

Regards, John.

--
****************************************************
,-._|\ (A.C.F FAQ) http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/faq.html
/ Oz \ John Fitzsimons - Melbourne, Australia.
\_,--.x/ http://www.aspects.org.au/index.htm
v http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/
 
Blinky said:
It's easier to just say in 3rd grade, too, instead of venturing into
that scary 4th grade.
Click to expand...

Whatever. It wasn't that I couldn't use them -- I just didn't like their
ways of doing things. More features and power doesn't always make an app
better. The simple things in life are often the best. :)
 
And said:
Whatever. It wasn't that I couldn't use them -- I just
didn't like their ways of doing things. More features and
power doesn't always make an app better. The simple things
in life are often the best. :)
Click to expand...

Of course, Outhouse is an exception to this axiom: it's
simple, yet too badly flawed in too many respects to be
recommended to anyone. It's the screen door in your
submarine.

--
:-) Christopher Jahn
:-(

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/xjahn/Main.html

After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
 
Christopher said:
Of course, Outhouse is an exception to this axiom: it's
simple, yet too badly flawed in too many respects to be
recommended to anyone. It's the screen door in your
submarine.
Click to expand...

And yet you're using it? ;)
 
Paul said:
And yet you're using it? ;)
Click to expand...

My bad: OEQuoteFix was making your sig look like "--" with no space,
leading me to believe you were using OE. Strange that OEQuoteFix
does that...
 
Paul said:
Actually, nothing is simpler than Outlook Express. I've tried all the
others and they're WAY harder to come to grips with, so I stayed with OE.
Click to expand...

The only newsreader that can be set to work almost exactly as OE is
Mozilla Thunderbird+offline extension. If you want to switch from OE but
are too used to its way of working, give Thunderbird a try. I use it
now, and I don't miss OE.

Bye, Fede.
 
For example, I have subscriptions for about 30 forums in which I have
marked some topics to see the future referring postings. Every time
when I start Outlook Express I must walk through all my forums to see
if some new postings are available for the interesting topics. A more
powerful software could do this automatically without my interaction.
Click to expand...

So, in conclusion, the only software the collective wisdom of
alt.comp.freeware can suggest that might do what OE can do is Thunderbird
(per Yotsuya-san's post)? The Dialog examples provided aren't what the OP
was asking for, and even the regular OE bashers don't have any helpful
advice on this score.

Interesting.

My respect for Outlook Express just went up several notches.
 
I'm in the same postion you are, Michael. I'd much, much rather not use OE.
I certainly don't use IE whenever I can help it. But Thunderbird, while a
good (IMHO) piece of software considering its early state, is flawed. You
might not care (I know I wouldn't) if you aren't regularly accessing an NNTP
server that requires a username/password, but if you do, you *will* have
problems. There is no way, using Thunderbird's Password Manager, to enter
these values until you actually try to access the NNTP server. Then, it'll
prompt you. I could live with that, but the program will then proceed to
'forget' the values you've entered and do so frequently. It's maddening time
and time again to have to reenter the username/password combo. And what I
find even more indefensible, if you check the Mozillazine forums and the
various Bugzilla reports that you'll find references to, is that this
particular bug has lasted at least for the past three years, through all the
various iterations of the Mozilla suite. The latest report from the
developers that I read was that yeah, they know it's there, but it's not
important enough to delay the release of their Mozilla 1.5 milestone build.
After three years?

For all its limitations and all its security risks, at *least* OE can
reliably remember usernames/passwords where appropriate.
 
I'm in the same postion you are, Michael. I'd much, much rather not
use OE.
Click to expand...

Not quite the same position, since you are using OE. :-) The particular
feature the OP was asking about isn't important to me, so it's not in and
of itself a compelling reason to go back to OE, which I used to use. But
it speaks well of OE that no other software without its own serious bugs
can do what OE can do.
I certainly don't use IE whenever I can help it. But
Thunderbird, while a good (IMHO) piece of software considering its
early state, is flawed. You might not care (I know I wouldn't) if you
aren't regularly accessing an NNTP server that requires a
username/password, but if you do, you *will* have problems.
Click to expand...

I had those same problems when I tried to use Mozilla (my email client)
as my newsreader. It was irritating, to put it mildly, and as far as I
was concerned a real showstopper. It amazes me that neither Mozilla nor
Thunderbird developers have seen fit to fix the software's inability to
remember usernames and passwords, but I guess they have different
priorities. In other respects, Mozilla's newreader capabilities seemed
very OE like (not particularly better, not particularly worse), and not
really to my liking anymore since I've gotten used to Xnews, which suits
me very well.
 
Hummm... I suppose you heard that slickwilliegates is going after google?
Yep! I read it yesterday. Big dollars scream and apparently Microsoft
wants what Google has(is). Rumor is that the next Windows will have a built
in search engine that surpases Google!
 
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