First off many thanks for what so far has been an incredibly thorough forum that has really helped me get up and running with Newsgroups.
Daily visits here and some sound advice has got me well and truly hooked on the entire system.
However I have had a few problems and would appreciate any advice some of you more experienced folks could provide.
To start with I signed up with NewsDemon as this seemed to be the only Usenet Provider that I could find any reviews on that also offered PayPal options. I signed up for their unlimited access with SSL encryption.
With this subscription I was offered NewsRover as my newsreader. Having played with Grabit and Alt.Binz as suggested by many folks here I found this NewsRover client to be...how shall I say...unwieldy?
So first off would anyone here actually recommend me spending some time getting to know NewsRover in more detail or shall I stick with Alt.Binz (in other words is getting to know the seemingly more complex NewsRover client worth the extra effort?
Although I like Grabit as well, Alt.Binz seems to be my only realistic option with regards SSL compatibility.
Secondly, I have noticed that I have had a few files showing a seemingly horrible and frightening number of blocks missing...in the region of 1500 which the parity files are understandably not able to repair. Is this maybe simply because I got unlucky or is it possible I am making an error somewhere for this to be happening one in every 3-4 downloads?
Apparently NewsDemon allows me 20 connections and I have set this in Alt.Binz but I also heard that anything over 5-6 connections is not really viable or helping me. I'd love some clarification on this and what using 20 connections as opposed to 10 realistically means.
Thirdly, I am on a 20Mb (VirginMedia in the UK) connection and on NewsDemon (running via the US SSL server) I frequently max out at about 1100kB/s which seems a little...wrong?
I guess again, the question is, am I maybe doing something a little wrong?
I know these are pretty open ended questions and I am more than happy to provide more information to anyone willing to spend a little time to help.
Once again, many thanks for all the advice already given in other threads!
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