I recently read that MS Outlook Express is not a red hot choice (being polite) of newsreaders. Apparently it's full of security holes, lacks support for several encoding formats (e.g. yEnc) and so on ad nauseum. Apparently the "fix" apart from security issues, is to obtain 3rd party plug-ins. I hesitate to go purchase one of these decoders/plug-ins as I'll still have a second rate newsreader. If you're wondering what brought this on, I just discovered that when posting to a news group, Outlook Express' spell checker does not run automatically as it does when one sends a plain vanilla email. A small item to be sure, but it's sure annoying if you're not aware of this little quirk. I would very much appreciate any recommendations RMS consumers could make with respect to their favorite news reader. Free Agent? NewsRover? newsreader.com has not been very helpful. TIA, Bruce
I tried a lot of news readers, and the only one I really love is called MesNews. It is a freeware developed in the Delphi 7 language. It works on all version of Windows (95, 98, NT, on 2000 and XP).
multi-servers, multi-forums displaying of messages in text and html format sending in text and html format display of the servers / forums in a tree structure form, or with only a button per server three levels of synchronizations for the forums displaying of smileys in the pictures form ( animated gif) various steps of quotage in colour decoding of the messages in multipart, base64, yEncoded etc... selective filtering multioptions setting color of the messages according to criteria : name, email, subject, size, etc... random signatures random formulations text management of the XFaces speller plugins etc... MesNews is available in 8 languages :
French, English, Dutch, Italian, Sweden, Spanish, German Danish
You can find it for free at
formatting link
Remark : more information about installation and configuration of MesNews, you can find on the web page
Free Agent might be the only one I've ever tried beyond the standard packaged thing in Mozilla. Its pretty cool, and for the price its hard to beat :-)
My gripe was learning the significance of 22 icons at the top of the screen that made newsgroup reading seem like landing a 747. "Features" are nice if you want or need them. I don't. And I don't like stepping over piles to get me to where I want to go. Reading Usenet *should* be a no-brainer pasttime. If I had to learn how to open a bunch of ziplock bags to read the local paper I'd be pretty sour on the local paper. Mozilla's butt-simple reader works just fine for me because I only ask it to let me read.
I use Mozilla Thunderbird for email and NG's (shame comcast dosnt like it at times tho...) Works well, though can be kinda thick to use at times, still VERY good software. Mozilla Firefox is a FAR better browser than IE ever could be !!!
Good software and appliance firewall(s) are more important though.
Interesting you use avast. I had it wipe out an old win98 box, though it was probably that box's fault. (1998 box) Like the software though, it works. I now use the Norman suite for the network.
Gravity - if you can find some place to download it. It's free, has scoring, auto article markup, on/offline reading, filters, watch lists, a bozo bin, quotes correctly, supports multiple servers and identities, etc.
I use the newsreader in Mozilla Thunderbird (an email client) and find it fine.
What is more of a problem for me is a good news server. My ISP does not really support his news server- says very few of the customers use Usenet any more. I have tried the free ones and found them quite lacking. The low cost ones aren't much better.
I have tried Google groups (actually Usenet, not a seperate google set). Its > I recently read that MS Outlook Express is not a red hot choice (being
I tried Thunderbird and it came closest to replacing OE. In fact I'd be on T-Bird right now if it weren't for one little hangup. With OE I have several news accounts setup with different newsgroups and identities - all using the same base Earthlink server. I couldn't get T-Bird to accept that configuration. It would only let me have one account per unique server name. Each attempt to add an additional one (using the same Earthlink server name) just overwrote the previous settings I had created. OE doesn't have a problem with this arrangement - so I put down the T-Bird Rubik's Cube after a few days of frustration and never looked back.
As for the 'power user' readers with all the bells and whistles - they're all OVERKILL for what I need a reader to do. I've tried just about all of them and they all generally suffer from having screens and menus that are far too busy for my needs. OE lacks about a dozen features that I'd like to have and that other readers probably already possess - but it does the two basic things I need it to do, consistently - read mail and read news.
And one that gets little mention is the dreaded full blown MSOutlook. I have no use for that disaster. My sister uses it (I guess she thinks it better because it's not free) and has e-mail problems constantly. I refuse to look at it any more when it gives her trouble. Come to think of it, I haven't seen an e-mail from her in a while...
Been using Firefox for a while now, with no complaints. I'm not sure how much better it is over MSIE, they both seem to get the job done - except on those few occasions when a web site demands that I use MSIE (rare). What I really do like about Firefox is that a simple tweak of the profile settings allows me to block most (if not all) ad streaming.
formatting link
There are more tweaks avail., but that ad killing code was the one that I found of most use. I guess that really is a major plus for Firefox after all.
Another nice thing about Firefox - no popups, means no popups. That was a constant source of irritation with MSIE. Despite all the claims and protections, here'd come the damned popups one after the other!
Probably time for me to give T-Bird another whack this weekend and see if I can get anything out of it.
I use giganews, comes with comcast and works fine. Fast easy, and VERY reliable. I would pay for it if it didnt come free. (comcast's ver is a little weird, though allows binary D/L's)
I have rarely reached the limit, 2 gig DL per month. Only when setting up the box all over again. (D/L'ing 80,000+ headers takes a minute...) All NG's possible are available it seems, even with broadband, it takes a min or two to load the lists, there are that many...
Personally, I prefer Netscape - you have to use Version 7.2 to get the Newsgroup and Mail functionality, but it's both free and works. And the NS browser gives you the most flexible and comprehensive securuity management options I've seen so far.
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.