usenet vs torrent

[twikoff]

Ive used usenetserver and most recently giganews.. because i got annoyed with the slow speed from my asp (i figured it was roughly 1mb / min.. which is roughly 15kbs).. and with giganews, i was getting around 150kbs.. but with my current local isp, i average at least twice that

[Nosebleed]

Originally Posted by dtcarson

Maybe the .nfo files you're getting are longer/larger; it would take me longer to download that program than to read most of the nfo files I get. The benefits you've given for a stand-alone task-oriented nfo viewer do not sound like an improvement over simply using Notepad, for my uses.

Different strokes for different strokes. For me, the 10 seconds it took to download the ~500 KB program made it worthwhile since, as I mentioned, I download and read plenty of NFO files.

So you browse websites, create an NZB file, load that into your newsreader, *then* go online to retrieve the bodies?

This is the process:

- type query into search engine
- find result I want, click check box to select it, then "Create NZB"
- NZB then automatically loads in NewsBin, and the files start downloading themselves

My news server has around 40 days of retention, so yeah, some groups I routinely download from would have millions of headers to retreive if I were to download headers.

Maybe the difference between us is that I don't browse newsgroups looking for things to download; in most cases, I know what I want ahead of time, so I search for it, then create the NZB file.

[twikoff]

Originally Posted by Nosebleed

This is the process:

- type query into search engine
- find result I want, click check box to select it, then "Create NZB"
- NZB then automatically loads in NewsBin, and the files start downloading themselves

My news server has around 40 days of retention, so yeah, some groups I routinely download from would have millions of headers to retreive if I were to download headers.

Maybe the difference between us is that I don't browse newsgroups looking for things to download; in most cases, I know what I want ahead of time, so I search for it, then create the NZB file.

yea.. if you know exactly what you want.. i guess i could see
but Im browsing, looking for something to catch my eye.. and i cant imagine how it would work to try and get it into an nzb, since there would be so many similar and/or unnecessary files..

i need more control over what i download

and yea.. i have a long retention period as well.. but since its just updating anything new since the last refresh, its only a few thousand per day, per group.

[twikoff]

Originally Posted by Nosebleed

This is the process:

- type query into search engine
- find result I want, click check box to select it, then "Create NZB"
- NZB then automatically loads in NewsBin, and the files start downloading themselves

My news server has around 40 days of retention, so yeah, some groups I routinely download from would have millions of headers to retreive if I were to download headers.

Maybe the difference between us is that I don't browse newsgroups looking for things to download; in most cases, I know what I want ahead of time, so I search for it, then create the NZB file.

yea.. if you know exactly what you want.. i guess i could see
but Im browsing, looking for something to catch my eye.. and i cant imagine how it would work to try and get it into an nzb, since there would be so many similar and/or unnecessary files..

i need more control over what i download

although reading your steps.. that pretty much sounds like just generating a queue.. which is exactly what Im doing when i select the files to download.. Its just storing in the apps queue, rather than a seperate file.

and yea.. i have a long retention period as well.. but since its just updating anything new since the last refresh, its only a few thousand per day, per group.

[twikoff]

Originally Posted by dtcarson

I've always used Agent as a newsreader; though I've heard their latest versions are actually a step backwards..

i just remembered the biggest thing that sold me on keeping the new version of agent
the queue/resume work great

in past versions.. when you had an error.. it pretty much made you stop.. and you had to restart anything you have going
with the latest releases.. on any error, it automatically retries after like 11 seconds.. then if it continues to have the error, it retries after like 30 seconds.. etc... but it doesnt halt anything
and since it has like 6 operations working at once, it will continue to download other group headers or files at the same time that its having issues with one area..

and the task manager is nice too.. so you can see what all you have queued up.. the status of all of your queued tasks... and you can move different tasks up or down the list, if you want them to finish quicker.

and i think the 6 connection limit is set by my isp, now that i think about it.. because i have had the error that it tried to exceed 6 connections.. so that has to be from my isp, since the app tried for more..

[Nosebleed]

Originally Posted by twikoff

yea.. if you know exactly what you want.. i guess i could see
but Im browsing, looking for something to catch my eye.. and i cant imagine how it would work to try and get it into an nzb, since there would be so many similar and/or unnecessary files..

binsearch.info is quite intuitive in that respect. It recognizes which files belong to a post and groups them all together (rars, nfo, sfv, pars) so more often than not, you just click one box and generate the NZB.

NZBs just store header data which is loaded by the newsreader. I guess it's a way of only downloading the headers you want and bypassing all of the others.

[Nosebleed]

Originally Posted by twikoff

i just remembered the biggest thing that sold me on keeping the new version of agent
the queue/resume work great

in past versions.. when you had an error.. it pretty much made you stop.. and you had to restart anything you have going
with the latest releases.. on any error, it automatically retries after like 11 seconds.. then if it continues to have the error, it retries after like 30 seconds.. etc... but it doesnt halt anything
and since it has like 6 operations working at once, it will continue to download other group headers or files at the same time that its having issues with one area..

and the task manager is nice too.. so you can see what all you have queued up.. the status of all of your queued tasks... and you can move different tasks up or down the list, if you want them to finish quicker.

and i think the 6 connection limit is set by my isp, now that i think about it.. because i have had the error that it tried to exceed 6 connections.. so that has to be from my isp, since the app tried for more..

Not to be a dick, but are these new features in Free Agent? Because stuff like that has been integrated into most other apps for years now. Just seems like Free Agent is years behind what some of the other developers are doing. NewsLeecher, for example, has an integrated Super Search which will quickly search all binary newsgroups.

[twikoff]

Originally Posted by Nosebleed

Not to be a dick, but are these new features in Free Agent? Because stuff like that has been integrated into most other apps for years now. Just seems like Free Agent is years behind what some of the other developers are doing. NewsLeecher, for example, has an integrated Super Search which will quickly search all binary newsgroups.

too late

as i mentioned.. i havent upgraded agent in at least 5-6 years
like alot of 1.x users, the releases were great and leaps and bounds above anything else available.. so never needed to bother with upgrading (which is weird for me, because I typically upgrade all my software religously)..

i havent tried free agent in at least 10 years.. so cant say anything about it.. but agent is easily better than anything else on the market (from a straight out useability standpoint), and always has been.. in my opinion.

[Mordred]

I'm guessing he's using the Real Agent.

I used to use Agent ages ago, but it drove me nuts that it saved the files I downloaded in the groups, so I'd have to go through and delete everything I had downloaded from the groups so it wouldn't use double the space.

About two years ago I moved to Xnews and it was a revelation. I loved and it and never looked back, quickly deleting agent off my machine.

Then about 6 months ago Roadrunners retention got really bad, a little over 24 hours on the binary groups, and completion was quite often awful. I looked around for a fills server, but I really didn't want to have monthly limits and I didn't want to pay $10-20 a month. I found Astraweb which sells unlimited monthly accounts, but also by the Gigabyte. They were offering 90GB for $25 with no timelimit for use, so I bought a chunk. I then found that Xnews worked okay with multiple servers, but was really slow on my machine, particularly when DL large numbers of headers.

I found a program called Grabit which is wonderful. It allows me to DL everything I can from Roadrunner, then if I still need fills, I can DL them from Astraweb, but it automatically only DLs the parts I need. Overnight I went from using 5-10gig from Astraweb a month to around 1 gig. Grabit is fast, has a decent interface (terrible if you want to look at files in the newsreader ala Xnews), allows multiple connections a pretty good queuing interface and has a built in binaries search engine (which costs money to use fully, but allows searching with limited results for free). I highly recommend it.

[twikoff]

Originally Posted by Mordred

I'm guessing he's using the Real Agent.

I used to use Agent ages ago, but it drove me nuts that it saved the files I downloaded in the groups, so I'd have to go through and delete everything I had downloaded from the groups so it wouldn't use double the space.

thats a setting you can turn off
you set it to use minimal space and it doesnt keep the attachments
or set it to purge on close
etc...

personally.. harddrive space has never really been an issue for me, so I liked having it there.

[zuffy]

Originally Posted by matome

Xnews -free & awesome

That's what I used to say until I start using Newsleecher. Xnews can't touch Newsleecher except the free part.

[TheMadMonk]

Originally Posted by Josh-da-man

And speaking of news servers, the Earthlink servers have been shit for the past couple of weeks. Are they upgrading or just letting them go to hell?

I thought it was just me. I have no idea what is going on with them.

[Blitz6Speed]

Originally Posted by zuffy

That's what I used to say until I start using Newsleecher. Xnews can't touch Newsleecher except the free part.

DAMN STRAIT.

I use newsleecher exclusivly, it is the best program ive used (ive tried them all, literally) and its the least pc hog of them all. Not to mention the slick interface. I use Newsleecher + Usernetserver + my Comcast upgraded cable internet and i NEVER go slower then 1038k/sec. 700 meg file takes 7 or minutes, if even that.

[Mordred]

I tried using Newsleecher but it had serious problems with using my fill server along with Roadrunner. It couldn't seem to handle servers which had different article completion and would crash constantly. Grabit does this perfectly.

[T-bone22]

Can someone help through setting up this process? My isp is roadrunner, so how do I setup my client with their server? Do I need a username and password? I've downloaded grabit as my client and using .nzb from search engines should suffice for me. Anyone that can help me get started I would really appreciate it.

[Xanager]

Tbone - hopefully someone who uses Roadrunner can reply, but you can try this in the meantime. The server is probably something like "news.rr.com" Some ISPs require you to logon with a user/pw, but a lot don't. If they do though, your user name is probably the same as your email address (the stuff before the @) and your pw is probably the same as the one for you email address.

I use Giganews for my server and Newsbin (replace s w/ z) for getting all my nzb stuff. For some reason that word is blocked with the forum filter I guess. They have a feature called "watch dog" where you just put in a phrase and if anything is posted with that in it you'll get an email with the link.

I download with this program: SABnzbd

It is fairly new, but it all runs through your webbrowser. There is no external application. It has a certain folder that it watches, when a new nzb is found, it downloads it, pars it, unpacks it, and puts it in an appropriate folder. I pretty much only use nzbs now. I don't remember the last time I actually downloaded headers and looked for stuff.

[dtcarson]

I'm a browser, not a searcher, as well, so that affects how I use the program. And I still actually read/browse some text/discussion newsgroups, with which nzb's obviously wouldn't help.

And like twikoff, I've been using the same version of Agent for years. I've experimented once or twice with newer versions, but any improvements I noticed were outweighed by minor negatives or new things I'd have to learn. I've got a process and habits which work for me, so I haven't bothered upgrading.
RR's servers were very bad a year or so ago, they've gotten better with completion [though retention is still an issue].

The RR news server address should be something like news-server.*yourstate*.rr.com, or maybe just news-server. There should be some help files on the rr.com website that tell you exactly what to use. You shouldn't need a username or password.

[joeblow69]

Originally Posted by T-bone22

Can someone help through setting up this process? My isp is roadrunner, so how do I setup my client with their server? Do I need a username and password? I've downloaded grabit as my client and using .nzb from search engines should suffice for me. Anyone that can help me get started I would really appreciate it.

From The RoadRunner Faq:
your newsserver is news-server.san.rr.com

You might want to notice the faq author mentions this:

I just subscribed to AirNews myself ($9.95 a month) - personally, I think the usenet articles available on RR are severely lacking.

[twikoff]

its funny
in a thread asking which is better (more preferred)
its 100% discussion of usenet
i guess we dont need a poll

[Mordred]

Originally Posted by twikoff

its funny
in a thread asking which is better (more preferred)
its 100% discussion of usenet
i guess we dont need a poll

Yeah, I think you just definitively proved the answer to the OP's question

[Nosebleed]

Originally Posted by twikoff

its funny
in a thread asking which is better (more preferred)
its 100% discussion of usenet
i guess we dont need a poll

[darkside]

I used to use usenet, but since I switched to SBC Yahoo here in San Antonio I haven't been able to find a news server. I'm guessing they don't offer one here.

[T-bone22]

Hey thanks for all yor help and thanks for introducing me to usenet, the speeds I get from this are ridiculously faster than those I got from torrents. I just have one more problem. I downloaded a very large file split into about 90 or so rars and came with 12 or so .par2 files. So when the download was all done I had a number of incomplete and missing files. I downloaded quickpar and double clicked on one of my par2 files, and it ran through all the files and ended telling me I needed like 1000 more blocks. So I decided to load my nzb again and redownload the files that were screwed up. This was tedious but I got it down to only needing 100 more blocks. I have no idea if I'm on the right track or if there's a much simpler way to do this. Any help would be awesome.

[ike0000]

I use usenet first. If I dont find it there I get a torrent. If I dont find it there, a very distant third option is p2p (imeshlight).

[twikoff]

Originally Posted by T-bone22

Hey thanks for all yor help and thanks for introducing me to usenet, the speeds I get from this are ridiculously faster than those I got from torrents. I just have one more problem. I downloaded a very large file split into about 90 or so rars and came with 12 or so .par2 files. So when the download was all done I had a number of incomplete and missing files. I downloaded quickpar and double clicked on one of my par2 files, and it ran through all the files and ended telling me I needed like 1000 more blocks. So I decided to load my nzb again and redownload the files that were screwed up. This was tedious but I got it down to only needing 100 more blocks. I have no idea if I'm on the right track or if there's a much simpler way to do this. Any help would be awesome.

odd are
since you just hit your server for the first time.. you picked a set that is near the end of your newsgroup servers retention.. so there were probably alot of missing pieces.. or it was just a really bad post
so you either browse for enough fills, that the pars will be able to reconstruct the rest.. you put in a request for some of the missing files.. or you wait and catch it on the next post

this is another instance of why i dont understand why you would want an nzb file.. you need to be able to track down fills and such

and the nzb didnt tell you that the attachments you were going to be downloading were primarily incomplete?

if you are going to use a free isp news server with a short retention.. you have to stay ontop of it and catch things before they start to slip away.