Posted by ChenHA on 11/28/05 18:16

On Mon, 28 Nov 2005 01:50:20 -0600, me@privacy.net wrote:

>Chen,
>
>What news server do you use to get a.b.m.a? I realize to get binaries,
>one will most likely have to pay for a news server. I don't mind that,
>but I would like to know which ones have been most useful, before
>plunking down my loot.
>

You got a link in the other post, another useful link if you aren't
familiar with the use of binary newsgroups is

http://www.slyck.com/ng.php

My ISP (Claranet) has a reasonably good news server, but as it is an
unpaid (or rather not specifically paid for) service it has short
retention time for binaries (only about 3 days but it may fluctuate a
bit). Check whether your ISP has a good service first before you give
out your money.

Because of the short retention time of my ISP I have since signed up
to Easynews as a back-up when files disappear faster than I can
downlod them. Easynews has longish retention time (again this
fluctuates, used to be able to get close to 40 days, now it has
dropped down to 28), but the good point is that you can do a global
search for all the files, so you can search here -

http://members.easynews.com/global4/search.html

for say, Russell Morris, and up pop all the files that have the name.
You can either use a regular news reader or their website for
downloading files but using their website seems to be better. It is
also cheap, at the current exchange rate it is only about £6 per
month.

The most important thing about news server is the retention time and
the completion rate, if you want one with very long retention time and
high completion rate then try Giganews. I have heard of another one
which claimed to have even longer retention time but can't remember
what it is called (it sells itself as a p2p service). Other news
server may also be very good and I'll leave it to those who use them
to tell you about the good points of those services.






>Many thanks.
>
>Stranger

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