Currently about 5 Terabyte of data gets uploaded by users world wide to the Usenet, a figure that is surely about to increase as the popularity of Usenet services rise. Giganews is currently running so called Usenet trials which offer the first three months of Usenet access of some of their Usenet plans for half the usual price. Users can for example get an unmetered unlimited download plan for $12.49 or the premium Diamond plan with additional SSL encryption and 20 consecutive connections for $14.99.

What do you get for that? If you have never heard about Usenet or Newsgroups before you might be wary about joining a Usenet provider. That’s understandable. A good start is to take a look at our Usenet Search article which contains links to several Usenet Search Engines. They can be used just like any other search engine. Just enter a name in the search form and look at the results. Downloads are only possible with a Usenet account and a software client for Usenet. There are several choices, we outlined one in our Usenet Client article.

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Giganews are running trial offers right now that reduce the price of their two most popular Usenet accounts by 50% for the first three months. That means that you can get their most popular account (the one that I’m using btw.) for $14.99 instead of $29.99. The account will get you unlimited bandwidth, 256-bit SSL encryption and 20 connections to their services which usually means full speed downloads even for fast Internet connections. I cap at 1.8 Megabytes per second with my 16 Mbit connection and 10 connections to Giganews.

Users who want to test the Usenet account do need a Usenet client as well to be able to connect to the Usenet servers. There are a few free clients available like Alt.Binz. That’s all that is needed to get everyone started with Usenet. Some additional tips include using the Giganews Accelerator to speed up header retrieval from Giganews servers and to take a look at the Usenet Search article to access some of the best search engines available to find the files that you are looking for.

The Giganews accounts come all with a 14-day free trial period for extra safety. You will not be charged if you quit in that period and followed the rules outlined on the Giganews pages.

Here is the list of steps again:

• Visit the Giganews website and signup for an account.
• Download Alt.Binz or another Usenet client.
• Download Giganews Accelerator to speed up header retrieval
• Use Usenet search engines to find the files that you are looking for.

I think that the offer is a fair one especially for new users who never accessed Usenet in their life. Keep in mind that the monthly price changes to the usual after the first three months though.

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Alt.Binz is a free Usenet client that supports several of the most important features a news client should have. These features are multiple connections and SSL and NZB Support. Let me explain why I think that those three are essential. Multiple connections is a no brainer, Giganews (the best Usenet Provider) provides access to ten connections to their servers and a client should support that to maximize the speed from the server.

SSL is important for security. You don’t want your ISP or someone else snooping on your traffic finding out what you are downloading, right ? And NZBs are a a standard that makes it a lot easier to download from the Usenet. NZB files contain information about multiple files and their location on the Usenet. Instead of clicking on hundreds of files to download them you can simply load one NZB.

Alt.Binz looks like a great client. I had no troubles adding the Giganews server information to the client and support for the Giganews Accelerator was given as well.

The major difference is the approach. Newsbin provides direct access to Usenet groups while Alt.Binz does not, at least not in the way I have been using it for years. Alt.Binz has some Usenet search engines directly integrated into the program interface that provide access to NZBs. That’s a great feature and I hope the guys at Newsbin will implement it soon.

Supported are respected sites like Newzleech, Binsearch and several others. A full server wide search is supported as well. Now with Newsbin I usually visit the website of those search engines and download the NZB from those websites. This step is no longer required in Alt.Binz.

Alt.Binz is a great free Usenet client which I will definitely keep an eye on even though I have paid for Newsbin. The interface is intuitive and fast and it does provide access to several features that are definitely missing in Newsbin. Oh, and yes it seems to work under Wine in Linux.

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The real benefits of the Usenet in my opinion are speed, if you have a good provider that is, reliability and better privacy, because of SSL and no direct user to user connections. On the downside we have the monthly fee, a Usenet client that has to be installed and configured and some time to subscribe to the right groups.

Usenet Search Engines help users find files faster. Most support the nzb protocol which combines all file information in one file that can be loaded into most Usenet clients. Good search engines should support advanced parameters, 200 day records, nzb creation and index most groups, at least the thousand+ important ones.

If you want to try the Usenet you could signup for a free 14 day trial at Giganews, the Usenet provider that I use for several years.

1. Newzleech

I have discovered Newsleech only recently but have to admit that it provides one of the best Usenet search engines. It provides users with a general search, an option to browse groups, to browse posts and to subscribe to RSS feeds to be informed when a new post matching the criteria is made.

Search results can be filtered by group, post age and size. The results are displayed in a list showing the most important information such as name, size, group, age and completion status. NZBs are created on the fly by checking at least one search result.

2. Binsearch.info

Binsearch offers basically the same features that Newsleech does. You can make a general search, search only specific groups and define post age, size and several other parameters. Results can be checked and a NZB file will be created in the process which can then be imported in the Newsreader.

3. Yabsearch.nl

A Dutch search engine with no English interface. Supports NZB creation and advanced search parameters. Displays size, name and completion status in the results.

Most information on those search engines is redundant meaning that all seem to index new posts fast enough and tend to display the same information in their search results. It’s still good to have some outs in case one of them goes down.

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