Thinking about switching over from Torrents to NEWSGROUPS

Which is odd, as the usenet provider that you're using, Power Usenet, is a Giganews reseller.

 

Do you have your server set up correctly? In the bottom left hand corner when GrabIt is trying to download it should give you a status.
Example:
Connecting to server
Grabbing from (server name)
Things along those lines

You said you subscribed to newgroups but said nothing about servers.

Your ISP may have a free server but mind you it will probably be slow. You can subscribe to another server such as GigaNews, Astraweb.

 

really good guide here about how to use newsgroups. they are definitely better than torrents imo.

http://www.stateofthesceneaddress.com/2009/06/how-to-use-newsgroups-your-all-inclusive-guide/

 

For games, a simple way to find NZBs is to copy the file name for the game you want from here: -

http://www.abgx.net/filename/?ch=6

And paste it into the search field here: -

http://www.binsearch.info/

If it's an older game, make sure you change the "Maximum age of post" drop-down list, then hit search. Put a check mark next to a complete version (you can tell by the size, the number of files, and if the figures next to the game are in red, it's incomplete - it needs to be green), hit the Create NZB button, then just open the NZB and your Usenet client will open and the downloads will begin. It's not a lot different to using torrents.

A better option is a proper indexed site such as Newzbin, because reports are categorised, people can leave comments and it's dead easy to find stuff and browse through categories. It does rely on editors to do the indexing though, so a lot of stuff doesn't get indexed, plus you have to pay to use it although it is very cheap. It's worth it IMO.

 

I figured it out lastnight about 2am my time. Lol I forgot to put the server names into Grabit and once I did that they worked.

I find it funny though I was doing the Trials on some of the news groups and I went like 3 times over the limit on Giganews.

 

i'm trying to find the best client to use, I'm using Grabit beta 4 but it seems unstable and takes forever to repair and extract. I've heard good things about newsleecher, anyone here using it? any other good clients out there? free or crackable would be nice

 

I thought it was just my computer on the Extract and Repair taking for ever. It also CHEWS up your resources when its doing it.

 

Newsleecher is good. All of them eat up resources when extracting and repairing. Its best to have nothing else running and just leave it be while its repairing/extracting. Grab It is stable for me, never had any problems out of it.

I don't use GrabIt to repair or extract, I cut those features off and I use QuickPar to repair and WinRar to extract. Quickpar is in my opinion a little faster at repairing and you can see whats going on and estimated time to completion.

 

I first started newsgroups in 2006, loved it ever since.
I use Giga news, newsbin pro, NZBRUS for my news search cause its catagorized versus binsearch where you take the time to read everything to make sure its a game vs a movie..
All in all I spend no more then $30 a month
Well worth it imo.

Also recomend putting Winrar & QUick Par on your pc, they help alot.

 

Right now I am using Giganews my self and like 3 Search sites. I just keep ending up finding things that fail to repair or are completed and they are not that old also only about 50 days or less but oh well.

I like Grabit very simple and easy, never liked WinRar to much always used powerarchiver.

Any way thanks for all the help and advice here for switching to Newsgroups rather than Torrents!

 

astraweb just recently did this (couple months ago). so as of right now you probably couldn't get something that was listed 260 days ago because the policy wasn't in play 9 months ago.

here's some good info if you haven't already come across it...
good high level view of usenets
good detailed 'how to' of the different aspects of usenet.

 

I've been having no problem getting stuff that was 265 days old atleast.

And @ Devian, there will be some that fail to repair, but the ones that repair successfully/don't need repair far outnumber those needing repair. Always make sure you are downloading the par2 files also, those are what it uses to repair. Some newsreaders don't download the par2 by default and if you are using a different program to repair(quickpar for example) they will not download the par2 to fix it. You must download them and then run quickpar.

 

My ISP (SBCGlobal.net) does not supply a NNTP. What should I do?