I have used the newsgroups for some years now, but have always just downloaded the files of the easynews website. I am trying out a copy of agent, but dont really know where to start. Can somebody point me in the direction of a good tutorial? I want to get good with agent, so I can subscribe to claranews, as they offer unlimited downloads, as apposed to easynews' 6 gig a month limit!

Not sure on a Agent guide but the help file that comes with it is good. Give it a shot and play around a bit.
BTW: It's not the best NG reader for download files.

Hi bubblegum,

Have a look here m8.

http://www.slyck.com/agent.php

HTH, T.

Hi m8

I've used Newsgroups for some time now and have used Agent and find it pretty good if you only need to access a single news server. If you plan on using multiple news servers then i'd recommend something like NewsBin (http://www.newsbin.com/) as this is designed with multiple news servers in mind, you can also setup Agent for Multiple servers by editing the Agent.Ini file.

Theres nothing wrong with Agent for downloading files so checkout the guide that TDF linked to.

I'd also be wary of ClaraNews,their retention and completion ratio was cr@p when I tried them a few months ago....

Smiffy

yeah avoid claranews. I signed up for usenetserver coz they were unlimited and i thought they were decent. completion rate sucked though. Really, you have to go with completion rate, and easynews is regarded as the best in this respect.

But 6 gigs, thats pretty much only 2 dvds max. It sort of defeats the object!

Yes your right it is perhaps only 2 DVD's but, lets say you sign up to ClaraNews and get your unlimited downloads,you'll find:

a) Slow Data Transfer Speeds
b) Low Retention For The Files You Want
c) Uploaded File Completion Is Poor

So you'll either end up with lots of part files waiting for someone to be good enough to offer fills or paying for another premium news server to get your fills that ClaraNews cant provide + If you use a Newstracker and check for a particular post you may find that ClaraNews has deleted it from their server.

If you need more downloads then pay the extra for more at either Easynews or Giganews etc at least you'll get 99% completion and 30 days retention.

Smiffy