Suggest good free news reader?

[Mark Zacharias]

I retired last fall and this computer does not support my old Windoze Mail news reader. Can someone suggest a good free reader? I understand Free Agent is no longer "free".

For the moment I'm slumming it with Google Groups.

Mark Z.

[Ralph Mowery]

In article <d324d757-0c7e-4375...@googlegroups.com>,
mark_za...@sbcglobal.net says...

>
> I retired last fall and this computer does not support my old Windoze Mail news reader. Can someone suggest a good free reader? I understand Free Agent is no longer "free".
>
> For the moment I'm slumming it with Google Groups.
>
> Mark Z.

Not saying it is all that great,but I hae been using Microplanet Gravity
after switching over to Win 10.

http://mpgravity.sourceforge.net/

[J.B. Wood]

Hello. I use Mozilla Thunderbird both as an e-mail client and for
usenet. Works fine for both IMHO. Sincerely,

--
J. B. Wood e-mail: arl_1...@hotmail.com

[N_Cook]

ditto on mozilla and eternal-september for posting to usenet

[Stephen Wolstenholme]

On Mon, 8 May 2017 06:38:19 -0700 (PDT), Mark Zacharias
<mark_za...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>I retired last fall and this computer does not support my old Windoze Mail news reader. Can someone suggest a good free reader? I understand Free Agent is no longer "free".
>

I paid $19 for Agent for news and email. It's worth it. There is still
a free for three months version.

>For the moment I'm slumming it with Google Groups.
>

I gave up GG after a short trial as I couldn't work out how to use
more than one server or get threading to work.

Steve

--
Neural Network Software for Windows http://www.npsnn.com

[rickman]

T-bird has it's issues. If you don't periodically prune old messages
below some number T-bird gets cranky and just plain goes away for
sometimes long periods. It also doesn't properly implement many of the
features you might like for reading newsgroups. But it will do the job
and it is free as in beer. I guess it's free in other ways as well not
that it helps a lot.

--

Rick C

[Foxs Mercantile]

On 5/8/2017 8:59 AM, J.B. Wood wrote:
> I use Mozilla Thunderbird both as an e-mail client and
> for usenet. Works fine for both IMHO.

I use Thunderbird as well, along with AIOE new server.
Both are free.
<https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/>
<http://news.aioe.org/>

And yes, as mentioned, you have to periodically delete
expired articles.


--
Jeff-1.0
wa6fwi
http://www.foxsmercantile.com

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[J.B. Wood]

Hello, and I've run 32-bit T-Bird versions on Linux and Windows for a
number of years now and have never seen the issue you describe. When an
nntp news server no longer has the posts available they don't show up on
the client subscribed lists either. Other than using "mark as read"
I've never had to do any pruning. Sincerely,

[ohg...@gmail.com]

Is there (and this is a serious question) any reason not to access the groups through Google? Maybe it's because I don't know what I'm missing, but the pages load immediately, new posts are updated almost as fast, it's free, and apparently my posts are getting through because Phil picks on me now and again!!

What, if any, features or benefits will I gain by using a dedicated newsreader?

[Michael Black]

I've been using Pine since shortly after sci.electronics split up, but
it's really a mailreader that does newsgroups. But I stayed with it so
long, that I'm not in the mood to change.

It's now morphed to Alpine, but I think there's a Windows version.


Usually when someone asks this question, they really mean a news server,
but I assume you know better.

Michael

[John Robertson]

Mostly I use an alternate access to Usenet as I don't want to feed
Google any more than I have to.

Also Thunderbird (and Giganews for access) works very well on my Mac.

Googegroups also redacts the senders email and that can be a problem if
you want to ask or answer a question that you aren't interested in
posting to the world.

It is fine that Google is archiving Usenet, however there have been many
complaints over the years when compared to the previous archive - Dejanews.

John :-#)#

[rickman]

I don't know what to tell you. I have found *numerous* bugs on more
than one computer, all running a version of windows. One of the many
bugs is that even though I've set it to download the full messages, it
doesn't download them until I ask to read them and often doesn't retain
them and has to download them repeatedly. That failure gives rise to

Error!
newsgroup server responded:No such article number 3392

Perhaps the article has expired

Click here to remove all expired articles

These messages should have been downloaded and retained, but instead
they are often lost.

T-bird on my system has serious problems with internal delays. I see
nothing indicating the system is stressed, but T-bird hangs for seconds
to as much as a minute or two. No other program does this, so it can't
be a system issue.

--

Rick C

[rickman]

On 5/8/2017 12:28 PM, ohg...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, May 8, 2017 at 9:38:22 AM UTC-4, Mark Zacharias wrote:
>> I retired last fall and this computer does not support my old Windoze Mail news reader. Can someone suggest a good free reader? I understand Free Agent is no longer "free".
>>
>> For the moment I'm slumming it with Google Groups.
>>
>> Mark Z.
>
> Is there (and this is a serious question) any reason not to access the groups through Google? Maybe it's because I don't know what I'm missing, but the pages load immediately, new posts are updated almost as fast, it's free, and apparently my posts are getting through because Phil picks on me now and again!!

Phil will pick on you even if your posts never make it to the newsgroup.
Phil's issues transcend the Internet.

--

Rick C

[Sergey Kubushyn]

tin :) The best ever and totally free.

---
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[Andrew Rossmann]

In article <d324d757-0c7e-4375...@googlegroups.com>,
mark_za...@sbcglobal.net says...
>

> I retired last fall and this computer does not support my old Windoze Mail news reader. Can someone suggest a good free reader? I understand Free Agent is no longer "free".
>
> For the moment I'm slumming it with Google Groups.

I have been using MicroPlanet Gravity for years. I even paid for it back
when it was not free (I was actually using Netscape Navigator for
newsreading, but it had become unstable!!) It is open source now.
Somebody else posted the link. It works fine with Win10 64-bit, although
it's weekly automatic compacting of newsgroups seems much slower than on
my old Win7 computer for some reason.

For a server, if you are not interested in binary groups, then eternal-
september.org works well, and it's free. I've been using that since AT&T
and then Comcast dropped their newsgroup support.

If you haven't done so, also check out the newsgroup
news.software.readers.

--
If there is a no_junk in my address, please REMOVE it before replying!
All junk mail senders will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the
law!!
http://home.comcast.net/~andyross

[Chuck]

On Mon, 8 May 2017 06:38:19 -0700 (PDT), Mark Zacharias
<mark_za...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

Mark I have been using Free Agent 3.3 for years. It is still available
at http://www.forteinc.com/agent/download-all.php. Are you enjoying
retirement? Trying to decide whether to do it this summer or next
May. Chuck

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[Michael Black]

On Tue, 9 May 2017, Sergey Kubushyn wrote:

> Mark Zacharias <mark_za...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> I retired last fall and this computer does not support my old Windoze Mail news reader. Can someone suggest a good free reader? I understand Free Agent is no longer "free".
>>
>> For the moment I'm slumming it with Google Groups.
>>
>> Mark Z.
>
> tin :) The best ever and totally free.
>

But does it run on Windows?

Michael

[Sergey Kubushyn]

What is Windows?

[Andy Burns]

Stephen Wolstenholme wrote:

> Mark Zacharias wrote:
>
>> understand Free Agent is no longer "free".
>
> I paid $19 for Agent for news and email. It's worth it.

I'm getting a bit fed up of thunderbird issues, so investigated
rejuvenating my agent v1.x licence, found that it is indeed possible

> There is still a free for three months version.

30 days, rather than 90 I believe

I'm glad I tried the eval version rather then shelling out the $19,
because Agent still *looks* like a program from 1994, I decided that
regardless of functionality, I would find that pretty hard to live with ...

[Michael Black]

On Thu, 11 May 2017, Sergey Kubushyn wrote:

> Michael Black <et...@ncf.ca> wrote:
>> On Tue, 9 May 2017, Sergey Kubushyn wrote:
>>
>>> Mark Zacharias <mark_za...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>> I retired last fall and this computer does not support my old Windoze Mail news reader. Can someone suggest a good free reader? I understand Free Agent is no longer "free".
>>>>
>>>> For the moment I'm slumming it with Google Groups.
>>>>
>>>> Mark Z.
>>>
>>> tin :) The best ever and totally free.
>>>
>> But does it run on Windows?
>
> What is Windows?
>

I don't know, I hear talk of some new operating system.

But the real issue is that apparently that's what Mark is using, so
"running on Windows" would seem to be a necessary matter here.

Michael

[ohg...@gmail.com]

Guys, again, what is the advantage of using a dedicated news reader as opposed to just using Google groups? I'm not being adversarial as I don't have a clue what a dedicated news reader program does or why it's better.

This is what I see when I access through Google:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/sci.electronics.repair/aRIH3Zpvuts

New posts show up as soon as they're posted and my postings are updated immediately as well.

[Sergey Kubushyn]

Google sucks big time. Not just that is it evil, not just one must be stupid
to trust them (some even store all their documents with them), but have you
ever read something written in any language but English from Google? E.g.
russian language groups are epic failure, screwed up beyond repair...

Then does anybody here remember Vera Lynn^W^Weh, eg. AOL Virtual Cities or
whatever it's been called back then? Never ever put all eggs in the same
basket. The power of Usenet is that nobody owns it, there is no management
who could shut it down, nobody to sue, no single location and so on. Usenet
is _NOT_ a business so it can't go belly up or decide to pump up their
profits by axing those parts that don't bring enough revenue not even
mentioning those not bringing any revenue at all with absolutely no prospect
of improving in foreseable future...

[bruce2...@gmail.com]

On Thu, 11 May 2017, Sergey Kubushyn wrote:

> Michael Black <et...@ncf.ca> wrote:
>> On Tue, 9 May 2017, Sergey Kubushyn wrote:
>>
>>> Mark Zacharias <mark_za...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>> I retired last fall and this computer does not support my old Windoze Mail news reader. Can someone suggest a good free reader? I understand Free Agent is no longer "free".
>>>>
>>>> For the moment I'm slumming it with Google Groups.
>>>>
>>>> Mark Z.
>>>
>>> tin :) The best ever and totally free.
>>>
>> But does it run on Windows?
>
> What is Windows?

Software on an adjustable animated screen.