Topic awaiting preservation: Any experiences w/ usenet?

I downloaded Unison from Panic since I like their other software (CandyBar & Pixadex) and signed up for an account at Usenet.com.

My only experience with usenet would be Google Groups so this is my first venture into using newsreaders. I'm curious if it should always take forever to do anything. Whenever I click on a discussion it takes forever to download all headers. I'm on a real fast connection and I'll wait 10 minutes. Is this normal?

(Edited by Jestah on 10-25-2004 06:02)

no. Usenet should be 'reasonably' fast. At least it always was back in the day when I still used it (with a modem. Most german isps had their own newsservers back then. They'de stream at 'full speed' ;-) ).

Might want to romp through preferences and look for something along the lines of 'd/l only new headers' or something. Maybe the help file?

The only other thing I can think of is that you are using the wrong east/west server.

I use my ISP's server and it is reasonably fast.

Just before I switched ISPs a few years ago, I noticed a huge difference in the speed of the news servers. It could be that your ISP just has a slow news server, which in that case means you're kind of out of luck.

: . . DHTML Slice Puzzle : . . .

Could you be more specific in using the wrong east/west server WJ? My ISP doesn't offer a news server so I subscribed to Usenet.com and am using their servers. I'm using the East server because I'm on the east coast of the US but now I'll try the west.

Um, yeah. You've got the east/west coast idea.

If you want, I'll test the east coast server for you. Just e-mail me username/password and I'll give it a go for you to compare.
Of course, it will take a few days. You know, the first day to get all headers, then a few days to grab new headers only...
Yeah, that's the ticket. And my wife is Morgan Fairchild, whom I've seen naked.

Must adimit that it looks very tempting.
Give me a week or two and I just might get a trial account.

alt.binaries.homoerotica is hella download

I used to do newsgroups quite a bit man but it got to where there was so much spam, and so many were laced with rabbit like prolific popups, and exploits (was using OE as a client) that I just said screw it. I'd download them on a schedule while I was at work and come home to everything being local, that was kinda nice. After I got sick of the spam/pop/virii I started in using Deja (which Google bought and turned into Groups).

Sorry to not answer your question (I'd merely echo wj's first post about headers vs full posts), but I have a question for you... how's the spam/'sploit/popup content these days?!

On how long it takes to download headers, depends how many there are. I use Agent Premium Newsgroups, and it can take a while (5 to 10 mins) if there are say 200K or 300K headers in a given group, which is rare except in the case of porn or binary groups.

If you continue to have troubles Agent is very fast. $14.95 month unlimited.
http://www.forteinc.com/main/homepage.php

Ramasax