Re: does anyone even use usenet

On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 15:22:16 -0500, Altered Beast
<j63480576@gmail.com> wrote:

Justisaur wrote:

On 8/11/2024 9:43 AM, Danoxary wrote:

What client are you guys using to write on here? What service?

 
https://www.eternal-september.org/
 
with Thunderbird, both free.  Thunderbird is a bit buggy though for
usenet, I'm considering paying for Agent, which at least used to be the
best for reading/posting text.
 
I'm not into the binaries, there's only pay services & clients for that
and from what I can tell none of those deal with text worth a darn.
 
I preferred using google groups as I could look stuff up easily enough,
which for some reason doesn't work in Thunderbird worth a darn
 

I got it really good, but I've only set it up once.  I'm worried that
when my yr is up I won't be able to figure out how to get everything
going again.

One of the nice things about Usenet / NNTP is that it's a mature
standard that isn't constantly changing, so a client written decades
ago can still interface with modern Usenet without issues.

I'm using Forte Agent 2.x, dating back to 2004! I paid for it the once
and just kept using it over the years, transferring it (and all its
data-files) from computer to computer to computer as I've upgraded.
You gotta love how all its files and configuarations are stuck in one
single directory; no need to worry about registry settings or DLLs
scattered in secondary locations.

I pay for my usenet feed, but I'd be the first to admit it's not
really worth it. It has the benefit of uptime; I think that in the
however-many-years (10+) I've been a customer the number of times the
service has been down could be counted on a single hand that's been
involved in a thresher-accident. The immensely long archive of old
posts -spanning twenty+ years- is a nice feature too. But it's not
really worth the price for how I use Usenet (e.g. non-binary stuff)
and it's mostly inertia that keeps me from switching to a free
service.