New to newsgroups

**TeutonicTwat** · June 18th, 2006, 07:49 PM

All right, I just downloaded a newsreader today (xnews) after hearing a couple people rave about newsgroups. But I think I'm doing something wrong because I never even located the file I was looking for. I mean, I had everything set up right and I eventually would have, but it was just taking so long I threw in the towel.

It's not that I'm impatient (I'm really not), it's just that this was taking an unbearably long time for all the files in this particular newsgroup to load (so long that, as I said, I gave up waiting for the one I was looking for). I have to be doing something wrong here because there's no way anyone would rave about this. Any ideas?

**boogiedan** · June 19th, 2006, 01:03 PM

ive been around years
i dont use em
some folks do
just like some folks like to drink wine
id say get torrenting, ares or
mabye moist sweet fanny's
wooooo

**charlesmelissa** · June 19th, 2006, 01:31 PM

Who is your newshost? If you have a paid subscription the software from there is usually pre-programmed. If not, are you using your internet service provider? They will usually work, but a paid news host is often faster. Try "nntp.yourisc.net" since I haver Charter cable internet, my free one is nntp.charter.net.

Free news hosts can be slow, but the one provided by your internet service should be fairly reasonable.

For more information go to www.slyck.com and click on newsgroups. They are faster once everything is set up correctly.

**CrashPeer44** · June 19th, 2006, 01:31 PM

Shawners Just You Thread!

**shawners** · June 19th, 2006, 02:37 PM

Actually its not you, its your newsreader program. I used xnews and hated it. Im stuck with newsleecher since i like it so much. but make sure your download directory is set up, and test it out with going to www.binsearch.info to download a nzb file, and then drag it to your xnews program to download files. And see how that treats you.
www.slyck.com has a excellent guide and detail information.

**DwarfBaby** · June 19th, 2006, 05:27 PM

Originally Posted by shawners

Actually its not you, its your newsreader program. I used xnews and hated it. Im stuck with newsleecher since i like it so much. but make sure your download directory is set up, and test it out with going to www.binsearch.info to download a nzb file, and then drag it to your xnews program to download files. And see how that treats you.
www.slyck.com has a excellent guide and detail information.

I agree. I used XNews for years but having no reasonable updates and ever expanding group sizes (not to mention horrible header collection and re-fresh) brings XNews to it's knees. There are far better alternatives but if you insist on using Xnews header files must be limited 500,000 headers or less otherwise the program will stall. Believe me 500,000 nowadays is very weak with some groups that top 10 million headers. In other words get a different program. I would strongly recommend Newsleecher.

**TeutonicTwat** · June 19th, 2006, 05:31 PM

I'm using my ISP's (Verizon) newshost. I remember hearing somewhere that Verizon's actually a pretty good newshost compared to most ISP's. I think I even remember hearing that it has unlimited downloads.

I don't think I'll be paying for a newshost right now, so I figure I should probably stick with my ISP's. From what people say, most free newshosts aren't very good.

Is NewsLeecher that much better? All that really matters to me is that it take less than an hour to load all the messages. After atleast an hour I only had maybe 5% of the messages! If NewsLeecher is faster in this sense, I guess I'll switch, but it seems like there must be something I'm doing wrong. But I'll give it a try, though.

Originally Posted by CrashPeer44

Shawners Just You Thread!

Um, what?

Oh, and I wanted to ask one other thing. I remember reading that it's not very safe using your ISP's newshost because they're more inclined to give up information. And that alot of members like to notify your ISP if they find out you've downloaded anything. While this isn't an issue with paid newshosts because part of their selling point is that this sort of thing won't happen.

**DwarfBaby** · June 19th, 2006, 08:02 PM

#1 Yes Newsleecher IS that much better. Night and Day

#2 Posting to Newsgroups from your ISP is a very dangerous as they will post your IP address. Downloading is safe (relatively speaking of course). Verizon's servers are OK from what I heard but I think they dropped the XBOX group because it took up too much space on their server(AKA big freakin group)