I have been using Pan for the last couple months or so, upgrading once every few weeks (whenever a new Windows build would appear). I've only ever had a few problems, and they were always reported in Bugizlla, most notably the issue around downloaded articles getting "stuck" at around 99%. Restarting the client always fixed that issue. It was worst with
0.111, then got a lot better (but not completely) in 0.112. However, after using this version for 4 or 5 days and attempting to get it to "break" similarly, I think I can say that the problem has been solved (at least on Windows). Woo hoo!
The only weirdness I've seen with this version is as follows: I started a download of a 60-70 part binary. For the first time ever, I got a message in the event logs about going over my connection limit. I am fairly certain this had nothing to do with pan - netstat didn't show any established connections to my news server, and my firewall didn't have the connections in its state table. Pan nicely took my client offline, an action which certainly made a lot of sense. However, when I went back online, nothing happened - the transfer didn't start back up, despite having over 50 parts queued (I was sniffing the traffic to make sure that it wasn't trying then failing very quickly). I tried a few things before finding that requesting a header update started things up again. I'd imagine that any addition to the task queue would do the same.
As I said, I doubt the first part is actually an issue with Pan, but I thought I'd throw it out there, just in case someone else just started seeing this issue with 0.113. My provider is Astra, and it was an issue with their American servers (which I mention just in case it was a problem across Astra's American servers, and another user was hit by it). If someone on a different server just started seeing similar problems, then maybe it's worth noting; otherwise, I'd write it off as a server-side problem unrelated to Pan.
As for the other "issue" (going online and having to queue something to re-start the queue), that certainly SEEMS like a minor bug, or a questionable design decision. IMO, the transfer should start up when I go back online. Maybe if I'd waited a few minutes, it would've started up all by itself.
Other than this very minor "issue", this version has been rock solid!!
And since this is my first post to this list, I'd just like to thank everyone who's helped to make this one fantastic news reader, as well as the folks who have been providing WIndows builds extremely quickly. There are many things I love about Pan - it has a simple but powerful interface, it seems very efficient memory-wise, and groups are loaded extremely quickly on my PC (as opposed to other newsreaders, where it can take ages).
From my point of view, the nicest thing of all has been the effort Charles has put into the frequent releases. Plenty of open source projects post snapshots, but they're always wrapped in disclaimers (this may not build, this may cause permanent damage, do not use, etc) - and often for good reason. Other projects don't even do that - if you want a development version, it's often "get it from CVS". Instead of going with that model, Charles has managed to put together what's usually at least a beta quality release every week or so, each version has shown a marked improvement in some area, they've all been usable, and none of the releases have corrupted my settings. There is no question that this project is getting worked on all the time, and for that I'm extremely grateful. Thank you very much for all of the time & effort you've put into this project - I can't wait for
v1.0 :)