Re: [Pan-users] [OT] Commercial news servers

[James Hawtin]

On Sat, 13 Apr 2002, John LeMay wrote:

> > Well for text... is that news.cis.dfn.de? :-)
>
> That's the one! I keep wondering how long the free ride will last. Since I
> really don't care about binaries, their service has been great. However, my
> second choice was Giganews. Their prices seemed to be ideal for what I
> needed. Anyone tried them?

I have not personally used Giganews but I have only heard good things
about them.

Here is my personal experience of Pay Servers.

newsguy, average completion, poor retention. My first pay server, gave up
after a month.

supernews, average->good completion, poor retention, you oftain get it
free from providers who outsource which is cool. I have access to a
supernews server from a box I have shell access to..

easynews, good completion, very long retention, 50 days web 14 nntp for
binaries lots longer for text, wehn I last looked at alt.gothic the had
128 days for nntp ;-) Dedicated posting server. Been a customer for over a
year, and will continue. Plus they give you fee download gigs for join
there cure for cancer team ;-)

My guide to selecting you pay service, go to the binary group of your
choice, grab the headers for the group. Have at what server the posters
who post oftain use. Select that one. Thats how i selected easynews, and
they have always been good enough for me.

Don't get to worried about download quotas, some servers say 6 gig a
month, thats 6 gig or a month. If you go over that you can "buy more", via
the web they just reset you billing date and charge your card now. Rather
than at your monthly reset.

Play with the servers out there, you only having to sign for a month, if
that server is no use to you, cancel at the end of the month. Don't be
loyal select one that is good for you. You ARE paying for the service!

On a footnote, you can get mroe from these servers, at the end of the
month you can blow your quota, while your connection is active you can
still download, so at the end of the month go for it! Otain get a bonus
1/2 gig that way. Not that I otain to do that. Currently I have used 1.2
gig of my 6 gig quota and my billing date is 19th april, I have only
rebought quota earily ONCE in my time with easynews.

Yes when you start up you might want to do some "historical" downloading,
but if you keep up to date and use a premium service to fill, you will
probably not need much quota (like me). After a while you will notice the
same things being repeated so you don't need to download >75% of the stuff
anyway. Just keep up to date.

And of course the best thing about a pay service is good retention times,
so if you go on holiday you can come back and have missed nothing from you
favouret groups, meaning you don't have to beg for reposts.

As someone else said on a group, think of it like a hobby, 10 bucks a
month make for a very cheap hobby. I spend many times more than that in a
week on beer and cigarettes ;-)

James