Giganews Usage

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » July 29, 2005, 12:55 am

Holy Crap. I apologize to the leech gods for slacking off in May. Giganews comes highly recommended by me. Fast, 50 day retention, and unlimited.

<table cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="511"><tr bgcolor="#eaeff8"><td>Period Start</td>
<td>Period End</td><td align="right">Days</td>
<td align="right">Bytes</td><td align="right">GB</td></tr><tr><td>03/26/2005</td>
<td>04/26/2005</td><td align="right">30.89</td>
<td align="right">---</td><td align="right">61.56</td>
</tr><tr><td>04/26/2005</td><td>05/26/2005</td>
<td align="right">30.00</td><td align="right">---</td><td align="right">31.04</td></tr><tr><td>05/26/2005</td><td>06/26/2005</td>
<td align="right">31.00</td><td align="right">---</td><td align="right">73.45</td></tr><tr><td>06/26/2005</td><td>07/26/2005</td><td align="right">30.00</td><td align="right">---</td><td align="right">64.45</td></tr><tr><td colspan="5"><hr size="1" /></td></tr><tr><td>03/25/2005</td>
<td>07/28/2005</td><td align="right">124.95</td>
<td align="right" nowrap="nowrap">---</td>
<td align="right" nowrap="nowrap">235.58</td></tr></table>

That's a lot of public domain artwork!

valryte · Post by **valryte** » July 29, 2005, 2:02 am

I agree, thats the same service I use as well...

Hoarmurath · Post by **Hoarmurath** » July 29, 2005, 11:20 am

I just reactivated my Giganews account after a hiatus of a couple of years...

Code: Select all

Period Start  Period End     Days  	 GB
07/13/2005    07/29/2005     15.90   68.18

(bah too lazy/lame to make a table)

Damn that porn!

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » July 29, 2005, 1:25 pm

Hoarmurath wrote:I just reactivated my Giganews account after a hiatus of a couple of years...
Code: Select all
Period Start  Period End     Days  	 GB
07/13/2005    07/29/2005     15.90   68.18
(bah too lazy/lame to make a table)

Damn that porn!

You are teh Grand Master Leech! When I first opened my account, I grabbed like 25GB in two days so your levels may drop off somewhat!

I actually did hear that Giganews takes note if you cross the 100GB/month barrier which I thought wouldn't be an issue until I saw your stats : )

(when too lazy to make a table, leech one already made like mine above and mod it! I took out as many spaces as I could without wasting a lot of time. As arch pointed out on another post, this board likes code all bunched together and puts a lot of spaces in front of the table if you have code with any spaces)

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » July 29, 2005, 1:47 pm

Leech now while you can! I forsee news providers getting a few lawsuits in the future. Only takes 1-2 for all the providers to get scared and pull binaries.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » July 29, 2005, 2:31 pm

Aslanna wrote:Leech now while you can! I forsee news providers getting a few lawsuits in the future. Only takes 1-2 for all the providers to get scared and pull binaries.

The old days were kind of fun...searching around for temporary FTP sites with directories like:

/Appz
/Warez
/Gamez
/Pr0n
/Incoming/..3a2/d0232m/..2/incoming/.appz

Hoarmurath · Post by **Hoarmurath** » July 29, 2005, 7:19 pm

Winnow wrote:
I actually did hear that Giganews takes note if you cross the 100GB/month barrier

I friend/coworker of mine is downloading over 200GB per month and they haven't bothered him...

Of course, that doesn't mean they aren't monitoring him.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » August 2, 2005, 11:22 pm

It gets better and better.

Giganews Subscriber,

Giganews is proud to announce that all Giganews Unlimited Accounts now come with 10 concurrent connections at no additional charge! All Unlimited Accounts are being upgraded from 4 connections to 10.

Please note that Giganews accounts are single-user accounts for your use only. Any sharing of connections with other people will result in your account being suspended with the possibility of being banned from Giganews for life.

What is a concurrent connection and how will it affect you?

Concurrent Connections refers to the number of simultaneous open download streams you can make to our news servers.

More concurrent connections can ...

Improve the overall speed at which you're able to download from Giganews.
Offer greater flexibility when downloading from multiple groups or when downloading lots of articles and headers at one time.
Provider greater resiliency and shorten recovery time when dealing with network issues between you and Giganews.
Again, all Unlimited Accounts have already been upgraded to allow 10 concurrent connections, so there's nothing you need to do to your Giganews account to start enjoying our new and improved service. For information on upgrading to the Giganews Unlimited Account please log on to your control panel at http://www.giganews.com/ and click on "Manage Service".

As always, thanks for choosing Giganews!

Regards,
Giganews Team

Neost · Post by **Neost** » August 3, 2005, 12:04 am

got that today.

just haven't been able to bring myself to shell out the 25 bucks a month for the unlimited. I use the 12 bucks a month 10 gigs on an auto-refresh. I rarely recycle but if i do grab more than 10gb in a month i don't get cockblocked.

And I swear i've been using 10 connectons on that plan for months. I don't recall being rejected on any of the 10 i have configured.

But then I don't require a couple of terabytes of storage like you either, Winnow.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » August 3, 2005, 1:55 am

Good news for Giganews users.. But it's just calling more attention to what people use it for. So really it's bad news for all Usenet users.

Siji · Post by **Siji** » August 3, 2005, 11:55 am

Be nice to have a browser that would do concurrent connections.. or has Agent finally come out with that yet?

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » August 6, 2005, 9:43 pm

Newleecher has released yet another big upgrade to the best binary newsreader out there:

NewsLeecher Version 3 Series History Log
----------------------------------------------------------------
# = comment
+ = new feature
* = improved feature
! = fixed bug
- = removed feature
----------------------------------------------------------------

3.0 Beta 1 - Released 06 Aug 2005
---------------------------------
+: *BIG ADDITON* - Virtual Groups Support.
Full support for virtual groups. Virtual groups make it
possible to combine many subscribed usenet groups into one
single big browsable group.
Note: Articles posted to two or more active groups will show
up as duplicates. A feature to remove the dupes from the browsed
'virtual group' is on the todo list.
+: *BIG ADDITON* - Simultaneous group updating while browsing.
It's now possible to update several subscribed usenet groups
at the same time, instead of one by one. In addition to this,
it is now also possible to browse one or more (by using virtual
groups) usenet groups while other groups get updated in the
background.
+: Added a 'Subscription Groups View' to the Active Group sheet.
This view gives quick access to the group update/activation
features and provides an easy overview of the subscribed
groups.
+: New 'Connect on Demand' feature. Instead of connecting all bots
to the server instantly, the connections are now made
"intelligently" and only when needed (for downloading, group
updating, etc).
+: Added new '%nl_article_download_folder%' variable to the
"Run Commands" feature. Check this URL for more info:
http://www.newsleecher.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1587
+: Added a 'Group' column to the 'Active Group' listview.
*: *BIG IMPROVEMENT* - New Download Engine.
New simplified download engine architecture. The new engine
does the same as the old engine, but is easier to bug fix and
extend with new feature due to the simpler design.
*: Much improved article window sort algorithm.
*: Much improved internal handling of the bot connections.
*: Small improvements to the speed limiter feature. slightly more
accurat now.
*: The 'auto logoff server' feature now works for individial bots
instead of globally. So instead of disconnecting all bots from
the server at the same specific timeout, it now only
disconnects the bots which have been inactive for more than X
seconds.
!: Fixed a bug where the bandwidth limiter, on some systems,
wouldn't limit the transfer speed to below 60 KB/s.
-: Removed the 'Active Group' dropdown-box. The box has been
replaced with a 'Subscription Groups View' (see above).
-: Removed the 'All Articles Downloaded' ballon tip window that
showed up when NewsLeecher was minimized to the tray and the
transfer queue went empty.

Note: Faststone Image viewer and Copernic both have recent new versions as well.

Mr Bacon · Post by **Mr Bacon** » August 6, 2005, 10:23 pm

I refuse to pay someone who can't spell "addition."

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » August 6, 2005, 10:57 pm

Oh, BTW, Agent 3.0 released. Supports multiple news servers.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » August 7, 2005, 6:14 am

Aslanna wrote:Oh, BTW, Agent 3.0 released. Supports multiple news servers.

/bonk

Newsleecher will soon support text newsgroups and then you'll have no excuse! It's in the development plan!

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » August 7, 2005, 6:15 am

Rellix wrote:I refuse to pay someone who can't spell "addition."

He's a Euro I think. Cut him some slack. Newsgroups are his first language. English is like his fourth or fifth language.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » August 19, 2005, 3:59 am

I'm experiencing some data overload atm. Has anyone with Newsleecher's Supersearch ever entered "top 100" in an Audio search? Good god, there's a shit-ton of top 100 and top 1000 posts of various types.

I was glad to see Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" was 90th in the top 1000 songs of the millenium. (wtf!)

Last night I downloaded Real Genius in HD format as a test. it was 10,600 MB (10.6 GB) and took 2:45:00 to download at 11Mbps. Remember when 2-3 hours was the typical time for downloading CD sized games and movies? I thought downloading HD movies that are 10-15 GB in size would never be feasible but now it doesn't seem that bad. Hell, in the 80's, I used to wait half a day to download one tiny C-64 game over a 300bps modem. Now you could download an entire public library in txt format in an hour with the average book being 1-200kb.

I'm with Bahnanna. Something's got to give. Being able to download 1,000 MP3's an hour with such easy access seems nuts. You can almost use Newsleecher's Superseach and Giganews' 50 day retention as your own personal mega jukebox without even downloading the songs to your HD permanently as the top 10,000 songs are constantly refreshed on the newsgroups over a 50 day period.

I feel the world is going to end soon. This has got to be the pinnacle of easy access to information of any kind. Take a peek in alt.binaries.hdtv and look at the mind boggling mass of data posted there for HD movies and HD TV series. It's scary. Forget Terabytes...we're talking Petabytes and Exabytes of storage now. The world explodes the day a 3.5 inch yottabyte storage drive is produced.

= 1 yottabyte
= 1024 zettabytes
= 1048576 exabytes
= 1073741824 petabytes
= 1099511627776 terabytes
= 1125899906842624 gigabytes
= 1152921504606846976 megabytes
= 9223372036854775808 Megabits
= 1180591620717411303424 kilobytes
= 9444732965739290427392 Kilobits
= 1208925819614629174706176 bytes
= 2417851639229258349412352 nibbles
= 9671406556917033397649408 bits

How long would it take someone to download a one- yottabyte file using a 28.8 baud modem? 11 trillion years.

Sionistic · Post by **Sionistic** » August 19, 2005, 11:11 am

100 yottabytes = 1 yattabyte!

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » August 19, 2005, 11:57 am

i dont get it.

Hoarmurath · Post by **Hoarmurath** » August 23, 2005, 11:22 am

Hey Winnow, you ever use newzbin.com? It's like 50 cents every two weeks, or something like that, and I use it to download .nzb files that my newsreader automatically opens and starts downloading...

I'm wondering is Newsleecher does the same thing maybe? (I've no experience with Newsleecher)

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » August 23, 2005, 12:59 pm

Newsleecher supports .nzb files. I accidentally selected one for download once and it did what it was supposed to.

I don't use .nzb though. I've gotten used to sorting groups so that I can check for pars etc.

Hoarmurath · Post by **Hoarmurath** » August 23, 2005, 2:55 pm

Winnow wrote:I've gotten used to sorting groups so that I can check for pars etc.

Yeah but I'm a lazy bastard. The only newsgroup I actually browse through is alt.binaries.multimedia.erotica.

Neost · Post by **Neost** » August 23, 2005, 3:32 pm

i made the switch to unlimited for 25 bucks finally. i decided to do it after i realized i have rollover invoices 3 times this month.

As for .nzb's, I hit one with newsleecher once and was pleasantly surprised to see it do the auto download thing. I don't use it often, as I typically like to know the file count, sizes, etc. etc when i kick off a download.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » August 23, 2005, 4:15 pm

Hoarmurath wrote:
Winnow wrote:I've gotten used to sorting groups so that I can check for pars etc.
Yeah but I'm a lazy bastard. The only newsgroup I actually browse through is alt.binaries.multimedia.erotica.

I'm starting to use the new virtual groups in the lastest Newsleecher betas. It's not good for everything but there are a few groups that go well together and it's nice to browse and download them altogether as one group. I need to send in a suggestion though to send files with "leech smart" to a subfolder under the name of the virtual group being used. Right now it still downloads them to the individual group folders which creates a little extra time in finding them if you are downloading a lot and forget what and where you downloaded.

The multiple header download feature has speeded things up as well but Supersearch is the number one time saving feature for music, games, movies and apps.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 27, 2005, 2:04 am

Newsleecher is offering free Supersearch until the end of the year for all trial users.

If you've wanted to see what you're missing, now would be a good idea to grab Newsleecher and check out Supersearch for the next week.

http://www.newsleecher.com/

I think think the trial period last 15 days (no credit card or anything like that required) (and yes, you can hack the actual app but not the Supersearch feature as that's a service. Well worth the 29/year)

Of course, if you don't subscribe to giganews, you'll mostly just see what you're missing as Supersearch goes back 70+ days just like giganews does for retention. If you're girly-man news server doesn't have 70 days retention, you can set Supersearch to however many days your server retains binaries.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » September 20, 2006, 6:40 pm

Oh Happy Day! Giganews retention is now 90 days for binaries and 1100 days for text which are currently set to never expire.

We've come a long way since the 50 day retention mentioned in the original post of this thread! Can you feel the excitement?

Giganews Subscribers,

Giganews is pleased to announce yet another massive storage upgrade for both Giganews' US and European clusters!

Starting today, Giganews' retention will start to climb from ~70 days in binary newsgroups to approximately 90 Days! Giganews is not currently expiring text articles and as such our retention in text groups is well over 1100 days and growing.

Retention is based on the volume of data posted to Usenet. If Usenet posting volume increases or decreases Giganews' retention may also increase or decrease accordingly. We will continue to keep pace with the ever changing face of Usenet so that we can continue to offer you the best newsgroup service available.

As always, Giganews is thankful for your business and we look forward to continuing to serve you well.

Thanks!
Giganews Team

In other news, Newsleecher is about to release a new beta version that automatically handles par and rar files. Sweet. I think how it will work is that Newsleecher will only download as many par files as it needs. Right now, Newsleecher saves bad rar files in all CAPS so you can easily see if you'll need par files or need to par check the rars at all. Hoping this new auto par/unrar system works well. Not a big deal if it doesn't but would be another nice feature of the already best in class binary newsreader.

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » September 20, 2006, 9:39 pm

Winnow wrote:Oh Happy Day! Giganews retention is now 90 days for binaries and 1100 days for text which are currently set to never expire.

We've come a long way since the 50 day retention mentioned in the original post of this thread! Can you feel the excitement?

I don't get the Brady reference... and can I just say... Greg was always the creepiest motherfucker on television. Even before he started nailing Florence.

Neost · Post by **Neost** » September 21, 2006, 5:36 am

Man, I've really been slacking off lately:

09/11/2005 10/11/2005 30.00 30,515,031,668 30.52
10/11/2005 11/11/2005 31.04 33,325,741,399 33.33
11/11/2005 12/11/2005 30.00 44,029,660,044 44.03
12/11/2005 01/11/2006 31.00 37,959,397,830 37.96
01/11/2006 02/11/2006 31.00 30,446,718,404 30.45
02/11/2006 03/11/2006 28.00 13,543,770,254 13.54
03/11/2006 04/11/2006 30.96 33,517,547,169 33.52
04/11/2006 05/11/2006 30.00 28,394,834,955 28.39
05/11/2006 06/11/2006 31.00 21,881,212,793 21.88
06/11/2006 07/11/2006 30.00 14,431,902,157 14.43
07/11/2006 08/14/2006 34.00 18,324,795,472 18.32
08/14/2006 09/14/2006 31.00 4,329,353,627 4.33
09/14/2006 09/21/2006 7.13 2,652,601,106 2.65

I blame it on the dearth of good entertainment released this summer.

May be time to start reading comics.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » September 21, 2006, 1:21 pm

Weak sauce Neost!

Taking a look at my download stats, I can trace back and figure out the reasons for the dips and spikes in downloads.

09/26/2005 10/26/2005 76.11GB
10/26/2005 11/26/2005 54.99GB
11/26/2005 12/26/2005 70.15GB
12/26/2005 01/26/2006 34.72GB <-- Started playing Second Life
01/26/2006 02/26/2006 9.75GB <-- SL Addict
02/26/2006 03/26/2006 16.38GB <--- SL Addict
03/26/2006 04/26/2006 11.16GB <--SL Addict
04/26/2006 05/26/2006 58.17GB <--rediscovered internet jesus
05/26/2006 06/26/2006 29.36GB
06/26/2006 07/26/2006 26.53GB
07/26/2006 08/26/2006 69.05GB <--Hacked Xbox 360
08/26/2006 09/21/2006 127.33GB <-- 360 games = 7.05GB each. Do the math!

Post by **Sylvus** » September 21, 2006, 1:53 pm

The virtual groups are okay, but I find so many things are cross-posted that it's difficult to make good virtual groups.

I wish it could condense post names that are similar enough (possibly via some threshhold you set).

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » September 21, 2006, 2:01 pm

Sylvus wrote:The virtual groups are okay, but I find so many things are cross-posted that it's difficult to make good virtual groups.

I wish it could condense post names that are similar enough (possibly via some threshhold you set).

There is a cross posting limiter in Newsleecher. I think I have mine set to filter out any post that was posted to more than three groups to cut down on spam.

OPTIONS --> FILTERS --> MISC FILTERs

will allow you to set the max crosspostings you will accept.

Post by **Sylvus** » September 21, 2006, 2:13 pm

Well, I don't want to filter them out entirely.

Let's say I have a virtual group of 4 different movie groups. The movie Caddyshack is broken up into 109 posts and posted to 3 of the groups. What I'd like to do is filter the virtual group based on post name, and see Caddyshack [1/109] show up in the list one time, instead it looks more like this.

Caddyshack [1/109] alt.binaries.a
Caddyshack [1/109] alt.binaries.b
Caddyshack [1/109] alt.binaries.c
Caddyshack [2/109] alt.binaries.a
Caddyshack [2/109] alt.binaries.b
Caddyshack [2/109] alt.binaries.c

Makes it a pain in the ass to select a whole movie, unless I sort based on group name, which then kind of defeats the purpose of having the virtual group in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, I love the program, I can just think of a few things I'd like tweaked.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » September 21, 2006, 2:47 pm

I use virtual groups to organize my download directories but I still check out the groups within the virtual group individually. What irritated me was trying to find a movie I downloaded that happened to be in some oddball group like boneless, ftd, etc. Lately, I've been using "Leech Specify" more often and directing downloads to particular directories. For example, I place all movies into the alt.biniaries.movies.divx no matter what format or group the movie came from just so I know where to look later. Same with mp3's. I always "leech smart" though so the movie, album, game, etc has it's own folder within whatever major folder category I'm downloading to.

You're right though, there's definately room for improvment and I made a post awhile back on the newsleecher forums explaining that it didn't make sense to have virtual groups if when you downloaded, the files still went to all the separate groups so he changed it to create a virtual group folder within which all that groups files would be saved.

I'm still trying to get the files to save directly into the virtual folder instead of into the sub group folder within the main virtual folder though.

For example, downloading from several MP3 groups, I'd like a "leech smart" to place the downloads into subfolders directly under the virtual "MP3" folder but instead, it places the files in MP3/individual group name/smart named folder. That doesn't make sense to me as a virtual folder is supposed to combine similar groups.

Nitpicking but I'd like to see that part changed. Sigil keeps cranking out new betas with great new features and tweaks so maybe I'll make another post with the suggestion.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » February 1, 2007, 9:25 pm

To go along with the recent Newsleecher good news, here's some from Giganews:

Dear Giganews Subscribers,

Giganews is happy to announce our latest retention upgrade: 100 days in all binary newsgroups!

The storage upgrade has already been implemented on our servers and our retention will grow day by day over the next two weeks until we reach the century mark.

As with any storage upgrade, our ultimate retention will depend on the size of the Usenet feed over the next two weeks, but all indications point to 100 days of retention in all binary newsgroups.

In addition to Giganews' upgrade to 100 days retention in binary newsgroups, Giganews continues retain text articles indefinitely, and the current text retention of 1300+ days grows day by day.

Giganews is proud to offer this improvement in our service and we look forward to offering many more service improvements over the coming year.

The Giganews team would like to thank all of our customers for their continued loyalty and support!

Kind Regards,
Giganews Team

Giganews always provides as much bandwidth as my connection can provide (currently 12Mbps) (42GB in ~7-8 hours a week or so ago)

Great, speedy, reliable service with outstanding retention.

http://www.giganews.com/

Midgen · Post by **Midgen** » February 4, 2007, 6:33 pm

Winnow,

Do you run 10 simultaneous connections in newsleecher with giganews? Seems like I read somewhere that 6 was optimum, but I can't seem to find it.

What about the encryption stuff? You using that? Just wondering if it affected your performance at all.

I'm a streaky downloader. I'll get on a run and download a bunch of stuff, then I get distracted and don't download for a while.

The hdtv stuff really starts to add up, and finding a place to store it all is getting challenging as well.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » February 4, 2007, 8:25 pm

Midgen wrote:Winnow,

Do you run 10 simultaneous connections in newsleecher with giganews? Seems like I read somewhere that 6 was optimum, but I can't seem to find it.

What about the encryption stuff? You using that? Just wondering if it affected your performance at all.

I use 10 connections only because I do use the encrypted SSL stuff. There was a note on Giganews stating that the extra encryption may slow the streams slightly so I upped mined from the six to ten. I could probably get by with six still. As long as your bandwidth is maxed, you don't need more than 4 or so connections. The reason you to use several connections is in case one of the streams hangs or something, the other connections will pick up the slack and keep you maximized.

In the case of my local ISP news servers before I switched to Giganews, I needed to use several connections because each connection was capped so it took several to max things out.

The secure thing I'm not sure about. It hasn't slowed things down and cost $5/month. You never know if you're going to download something that's not what it's labeled as (child porn popping up somewhere it's not supposed to be and not labeled) While you can delete it right away, any snoopers wouldn't know that.

That's why I also recommend grabbing the free Erasure app that does a better job of deleting files from your HD for those cases:

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

No need to go overboard, but setting it to triple erase something will make it extremely hard to retrieve data. This really isn't necessary except for highly questionable material or personal information, tax data, etc., or when wiping your HD before throwing away or selling it.

Ashur · Post by **Ashur** » February 5, 2007, 12:09 pm

Just signed up myself.

My new ISP has a pretty bitchen news server, but I found a major limitation when I hit my monthly bandwidth limit (unaware I had one!) 3 days into the subscription. Apparently grabbing headers isn't free and they had like 100 days of retention, so just grabbing headers on a.b.mm probably screwed me.

I went for Silver this month. Not sure I want to drop $25/mo on a news service, but $13 seemed acceptable. We'll see how fast I cap.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » February 5, 2007, 12:42 pm

Ashur wrote: I went for Silver this month. Not sure I want to drop $25/mo on a news service, but $13 seemed acceptable. We'll see how fast I cap.

With the unlimited plan (25.00) and Encrypted SSL Service (5.00) I'm paying 30.00/month but IMO it's the best bang for the buck entertainment value over Cable, etc. that I pay each month.

The nice thing about Giganews is it's easy to upgrade or "refresh" your monthly totals early if needed...so if you do average around 25GB and run out of GB's a few days early, you can just reset your totals and pay for the next month starting on whatever day you run out for another 30 days.

I'm way over 25GB/month or I'd go that route.

Xatrei · Post by **Xatrei** » February 5, 2007, 4:54 pm

I use powerusenet myself. I get unlimited usage, 4 unthrottled connections and 55 days of retention, which is plenty for my needs. It costs me only 15 bucks a month. They have good, fast propagation and I tend to keep up with the newsgroups that I'm interested in. They have a $20 / month plan that includes 75 day retention and 8 connections. I tried it out for a month, but I ended up backing down to the 55 day, 4 connection plan since it more than met my needs. If you don't want to pay 25 bucks a month, you may want to check them out instead.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » February 5, 2007, 5:44 pm

As far as I can tell, Powerusenet is a reseller of Giganews. If you don't mind less retention and your bandwidth is maxed with them, they aren't a bad choice. Another difference is that Powerusenet doesn't allow you to post, just leech, which probably isn't a big deal to most.

Ashur · Post by **Ashur** » February 6, 2007, 1:35 pm

Actually Xatrei, that Power Usenet Unlimited Downloads, 4 Streams, only $14.95 plan looks like a much better deal for me than Giganews Silver since I don't need that much retention. Thank you very much for pointing them out!

The good news is I'm still in my trial period with Giganews (under 1GB down and not yet 2/8) and can drop them w/o charge, no harm, no foul.

I was somewhat worried about the 25GB cap and having to roll-over to a new billing cycle more than I wanted, although I had no current needs that would consume that amount (given that headers were free), it's nice to know if I needed/wanted it, I could.

My preference would have been to stick with my ISP, but given the fact headers are included in the bandwidth cap, that's a problem if I hit any high traffic group.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » February 6, 2007, 1:54 pm

Ashur wrote:Actually Xatrei, that Power Usenet Unlimited Downloads, 4 Streams, only $14.95 plan looks like a much better deal for me than Giganews Silver since I don't need that much retention. Thank you very much for pointing them out!

The good news is I'm still in my trial period with Giganews (under 1GB down and not yet 2/8) and can drop them w/o charge, no harm, no foul.

I was somewhat worried about the 25GB cap and having to roll-over to a new billing cycle more than I wanted, although I had no current needs that would consume that amount (given that headers were free), it's nice to know if I needed/wanted it, I could.

My preference would have been to stick with my ISP, but given the fact headers are included in the bandwidth cap, that's a problem if I hit any high traffic group.

Since you're heading over to Powerusenet, let me know how the speed consistency, completion (should be same as giganews since use same servers), etc is. I don't think I can give up the 100 day retention but nice to have a $15.00 option if it can still max out bandwidth with 55 day retention.

Just remember to set your Supersearch max to 55 days!

Ashur · Post by **Ashur** » February 6, 2007, 2:28 pm

You bet.

Xatrei · Post by **Xatrei** » February 6, 2007, 3:19 pm

I've been using powerusenet for nearly 2 years now, and used giganews previously, but switched for better prices on a plan that was more suitable to my needs. I have never had any complaints or regrets. Consistency and completion are about as solid as you're going to find. New messages propagate quickly, so if someone is posting a big set of files on one service with a fat pipe, it's typically available within minutes. The retention is plenty for me, since I tend to keep up with the stuff that I care about, and, in any case, things tend to be reposted often enough that when I want something a little out of the ordinary (for me), I can usually find it. If you find yourself using Supersearch to find oddball stuff more than just keeping track of a handful of groups, you'll probably miss the 100 days of retention, though.

Post by **Sylvus** » February 8, 2007, 11:46 am

Winnow wrote: With the unlimited plan (25.00) and Encrypted SSL Service (5.00) I'm paying 30.00/month but IMO it's the best bang for the buck entertainment value over Cable, etc. that I pay each month.

I just upgraded to Diamond service last night, was hoping that the extra 10 connections would speed me up but it looks like I'm maxed at my isp level. I don't know if SSL is necessary, but I figure for an extra $60 a year it can't hurt.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » February 8, 2007, 12:43 pm

Sylvus wrote: I just upgraded to Diamond service last night, was hoping that the extra 10 connections would speed me up but it looks like I'm maxed at my isp level. I don't know if SSL is necessary, but I figure for an extra $60 a year it can't hurt.

Giganews has excellent bandwidth. At 12Mbps, I can max out with just a few connections. I'm also not sure about the SSL but it doesn't slow me down at least. I suppose what it's doing is preventing your ISP from knowing what you're downloading but Giganews will always know if they choose to. At least with Giganews, plans are month to month so you can change at will.

I was searching for something last night that turned out to have been posted 89 days ago. Score one for 100 day retention!

Ashur · Post by **Ashur** » February 8, 2007, 1:27 pm

Switched w/o charge by Giganews over to Power Usenet.

I like it. Xatrei thanks for the tip!

Now to deal with my wife's latest emergency, her PC blew up this morning. It's a 5-year-old eMachines desktop that I've been nagging her to replace with a notebook since she keeps dropping hints she wants one. Now it looks like I might have to troubleshoot this POS just so I can recover the data.. although mounting the HDD as a slave on my desktop for data recovery and just buying her a laptop may be preferable at this point.

this should also get rid of her recurring Adware problem...

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » April 12, 2007, 5:35 pm

Ah, Giganews...simply the best!

120 Reasons Giganews just Changed Usenet

Giganews has completed a major storage upgrade on their global Usenet server cluster which will grow binary retention to 120 days. This upgrade changes the face of Usenet by allowing thriving newsgroup communities to engage for longer periods of time through fast and reliable Usenet servers. With 120 days of retention, Giganews will offer nearly 1 billion Usenet articles in over 100,000 newsgroups.

Less than two months ago, Giganews was the first Usenet provider to hit the century mark for binary retention, but in keeping with a commitment to meet and exceed the expectations of its customers, Giganews has again increased storage capacity which will allow Giganews' Usenet binary retention to grow to 120 days over the next 18 days.

"When we completed our last retention upgrade to 100 days we were pleased, but we wanted to push ourselves to the next level. Giganews is in a perpetual upgrade cycle and this current upgrade is just part of our larger goal of re-investing in our server infrastructure for the benefit of our customers. At Giganews we feel we have a responsibility to push the envelope when it comes to services and features and we hope these efforts will help expand and support the greater Usenet community as a result," said David Vogelpohl, VP of Marketing and Sales at Giganews.

Giganews has been making Usenet history since its inception, by regularly expanding the scale of Usenet retention and offering newsgroup communities more available articles than any other Usenet system. Giganews was also the first Usenet server to provide true broadband download speeds by offering non-rate limited access to its world class Usenet system.

In 2006, Giganews set another Usenet milestone by developing, and then expanding the use of SSL encryption to help ensure security and anonymity for the Usenet community.

120 Days of retention is a first for Usenet and a significant achievement for Giganews. Increased retention times allow for newsgroup communities to access posts over a longer period of time and through a larger pool of articles. Giganews is proud to offer this first for the Usenet community and is looking forward to further improving its services and features.

I somehow managed to grab 163GB from Giganews the last 30 day cycle ending on the 26th of each month and am up to 97GB about halfway through this cycle. Always max speeds and never any complaints from Cox or Giganews about usage.

Giganews makes downloading HD content and other stuff not so painful.

For comparison, the Cox usenet servers have about 3 days retention for binaries vs 120 for Giganews.

Post by **Sylvus** » April 12, 2007, 5:53 pm

I just got my 500Gb hd installed, and finally got Newsleecher's RnE working, and I've dl'ed probably 100 GB in the last few days.

I don't know how I ever lived without RnE before!!

Soreali · Post by **Soreali** » April 12, 2007, 6:14 pm

I really gotta get the RnE thing..