Usenet service providers: suggestions?

[bbernardini]

I've been using Newsfeeds to access newsgroups, but it seems as if they've dropped a number of newsgroups lately. I'm looking around for another provider. Anybody have any suggestions?

[DaveJ]

1. Google works fine for me.

Have you tried Usenet straight through Google? I'm sure you can do anything imaginable with what they provide.

If you want something that is not web based, they also have a page with feed reading software here: http://groups.google.com/group/gmail-help-alerts/feeds , where they are suggesting FeedDemon and Newsgator, although I haven't used them myself.

[bbernardini]

2. I forgot to mention the binaries issue.

:) Specifically, my current provider has dropped pretty much every single binary group I would be remotely interested in.

[RoyGBiv]

3. Giganews ...

Been using them for years. Up to a 90-day retention rate on some binaries groups.

[bbernardini]

4. Ah, so the "200 day retention rate" is just an average, then? nt

[RoyGBiv]

5. Huh ... I dunno actually ...

I've been with them for so long I never go to the website and look at that stuff. Retention on binaries when I first signed up was 30 days max, and the last increase I noticed was up to 90 days.

The few binaries groups I look at these days have thousands of posts per day, and all I can really tell you about them is I can get pieces that were posted three months ago. I have found PARs and such on these groups that are older than that, but since I've got my reader set to purge headers older than 7 days, and since the groups are so big, I tend to avoid trying to see how old the oldest header is.

200 days sounds about right if text groups and dead binaries groups are included. There's stuff on the text groups that goes back to the day before forever ago.

FWIW, my provider before Giganews was Newsfeeds and before that a company called NewsGuy. Giganews has far higher retention and, more importantly to me, propagation rates. For the most part, incomplete headers with Giganews tend to occur at the point of origin.

OnEdit: I just downloaded all the headers on one of the groups I visit, and its oldest article today (March 23, 2008) is from September 15, 2007. I think (could be wrong, but this is the way it worked at one time) some of the really busy groups have a max-articles-retained limit. I also started to check the busiest group I use just now. It had 100,000 headers at less than 1% of total where I stopped it, so I suspect some of those go back quite awhile.

[RoyGBiv]

6. Ressurecting an old post ...

This question got me curious, so over the past few months I've been doing some observations.

I subscribe to one binaries group that averages 1637 articles per day. That's not headers, rather articles, as in one complete article may have a hundred or so headers.

The oldest article is 204 days old.

I subscribe to another binaries group that has infrequent posts. It has articles dating back to September of last year, slightly over 200 days.

Text based groups have articles going back years. Officially, Giganews says it has a ~1800 day retention on text only groups, and that is true for groups I frequent.

[Wilber_Stool]

7. I use Easynews.

It works well with GetRight, my download manager.