Can someone recommend a good usenet binaries client?
 

As some of you may know, I just got a new computer and it's time for me to install all my software, again. I'm in the market for a good usenet client, specifically for binaries. I've used GrabIt in the past but it's a little buggy and it's not scriptable.

Any recommendations? Thank you...

For Windows, <a href="http://www.newsbin.com">Newsbin</a> has always treated me well, but it is shareware. It supports yEnc, and its filtering system uses regular expressions---very nice! However it's a binaries workhorse, nothing more.

I also use newsbinpro and it works just fine for me.

GrabIt is a freeware newsreader designed for your purposes. I've been using it for a while with no complaints, I'ld reccomend it based upon my usage thus far anyways (10 gb downloaded, 2 file errors total). Only thing it can't do currently is handle MIME-encoded attachments.. which is a little annoying, but there are other third-party utilities that'll do the job if you really need that file..

You can check it out here: http://www.shemes.com/

Devin

I use GrabIt too, but before that I used Agent and it was pretty decent.

I've used Agent, Powergrab, Grab-it and Newsleecher. Each has their pros and cons.

With my usage (downloading large amounts of complete cd's, putting them in a seperate directory), the last three are good. I dropped Powergrab because it can only handly one server (or you have to install it twice). Grab-it does allow that, so I used that. I've recently tried Newsleecher, because it *really* uses more than one server (downloading posts from all servers and putting them together). However, I couldn't get Newsleecher to download the headers for multiple groups in a batch, something grab-it can do.

At the moment, I'd say a mix between Grab-it and Newsleecher would be best, but in the absence of such a program, I use Grab-it.

I prefer Agent from forte inc (www.forteinc.com). I've been using it since its earliest betas back in the mid-90s. Now at 2.0 (2.1 on the way!), it is still my favorite client.

forte agent! forte agent! forte agent!

'nuff said.
You'll also want HJSplit and QuickPAR for handling segmented posts.

For the Agent users: can you download with multiple threads at once? Because that's pretty much the reason I went to Powergrab years ago.

I'd say that if you only want to download binaries, powergrab, grab-it or newsleecher are *much* better than agent. If you also want to post messages and follow discussions, agent is a better choice.

Just to show you what I mean: with Grab-it, I have two newsservers set up (one paid account, one from my ISP), each with multiple newsgroups selected. I can download the headers for six or seven groups at once (limited by the maximum number of connections at those servers). I can then check the newest posts, or see only the multi-part binaries, or everything in the group (or whatever selection I prefer). I then select those binaries that I want to download (i.e. a full cd, or a movie, etc), where I want to download them to, and have them put in the download queue (again, 3 or 4 threads per server). ..and a couple of hours later, I'm finished downloading a couple of movies, music, pictures, and whatever else I put in the queue.

In the newest version I can even use NZB files, which allows me to bypass that whole search and selection process - one XML file contains all the data needed to download an entire game/movie/cd/whatever.

And *that* is why I prefer grab-it. :)

The 2.1 version of agent will allow multiple servers.

I haven't found single threaded downloads to be a problem. My newserver pumps out bins at the max bandwidth I can receive anyway, so having multiple threads is moot. I get about 250MB per hour whether its from web or news.

It is a problem with some servers (including mine) that have limited their bandwidth. One of the servers I use has a 15kb/s per thread, with up to 3 threads. So in that case, it makes a huge difference.

Oh man, sorry. That really sucks. I can sure see why you'd want a multi-thread client.

I know this isn't really a client, but I use Easynews.com. Their web interface makes dealing with downloading headers and sifting thru them with search functions alot easier. Then when you queue up your complete-cd or dvd, you just use getright and download it via http with segmented downloading to maximize bandwidth. I get about 450KB/s on my cable line doing it this way. 10GB downloaded overnight.

$10 a month for 10GB/mo + they have a deal with grid.org that if you use spare cpu cycles for distributed computing, you get a gig for every 15 days cpu time. I run it on all my machines and some spare servers at work that don't do much and racked up 60 spare gigs in a few months time.

XNews

its easy, its freeware, its good

If you don't want to do warez and want something close to the power of Newsbin (which is god btw) then give BNR a try

http://www.bnr2.org


it's for Win and Linux.

Holo, when looking at that page, it *seems* to allow me to download the headers of more than one group in a batch. I mean that, like grab-it, you can select a number of groups, and set the program to download the headers for all those groups.

So far, Newsleecher doesn't seem to be able to do it, Newsbin can't, but grab-it and powergrab can. (Or I simply can't seem to figure out how to do it with those first two programs...)

Can you tell me if BNR2 can or cannot do that? If it can, it may be the perfect newsreader for me.

Xnews - http://xnews.newsguy.com/

If you can install PERL, use UBH - http://ubh.sf.net/ - it supports regular expressions, amongst other features.

I also use Xnews, and really enjoy it. It's easy to use and best of all free.

I use XNews

only one's i've had experience with are newsbin, agent forte, and PAN (designed for linux but runs pretty well under windows). of the three, PAN is my favorite, and allows for easier searching (groups and headers) than agent forte, and is more usable as an article browser than newsbin. good luck finding a good prog