Giganews in the year 2011: WE DEMAND $34.99 NOW! DEAL with it, wankers!

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Starting January 1, 2011, Diamond membership registration increases to $34.99 for new Diamond members. Upgrade before December 31st, 2010 to lock in your Diamond membership for $29.99.

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Im speechless...
So.. instead of lowering their prices they introduce lame MIMO usenet browser+search engine which is EXCLUSIVE to diamond account and wont work with any other their plan not to say any other NNTP provider + VPN service..

Perhaps they think that ongoing astraweb's problems will drive users into their greedy embraces? I doubt it

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- Diamond accounts will increase in price by $5 to $34.99 a month and include extra connections, VPN access and the new Mimo newsreader.
- Platinum accounts will include SSL encryption for the same $24.99 monthly price. Where SSL excryption is currently a $5/mo. add-on.
- Silver accounts (50 GB/mo.) will include SSL for $14.99 a month
- Bronze accounts (10 GB/mo.) will include SSL for $9.99 a month
- Pearl accounts (3 GB/mo.) will include SSL for $4.99 a month

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Who cares? Only idiots are with them anyways.

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Originally Posted by heiska

Who cares? Only idiots are with them anyways.

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Or people like me that are willing to pay a few dollars more for peace of mind, and knowing that every single NZB I download will complete. Every. Single. Time.

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Originally Posted by heiska

Who cares? Only idiots are with them anyways.

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I'm sorry but this post was completely ignorant and disrespectful.

First of all, if you do not care, don't bother to post in a thread where the issue at hand is a topic which you do not care about.

Second of all, just because some individuals have more money than you, don't try to be condescending and ignorant.

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Originally Posted by Skiz

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Originally Posted by heiska

Who cares? Only idiots are with them anyways.

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Or people like me that are willing to pay a few dollars more for peace of mind, and knowing that every single NZB I download will complete. Every. Single. Time.

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I completely agree with you Skiz. I am paying slightly more for my ISP for the same peace of mind you're talking about. I would rather pay a little extra, to ensure that my internet RARELY goes down or that my Usenet provider is up whenever I need it to be.

Personally, I find this tactic slightly alarming. Giganews decides to increase its retention every few months but now the end user is going to pay more for that priviledge. I would rather they cut their retention in half (which would still be enough for me, imo) than to increase their sales price.

I haven't had any issues with AstraWEB. What is the peace of mind everyone's going on about?

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Originally Posted by WHiKWiRE

I haven't had any issues with AstraWEB. What is the peace of mind everyone's going on about?

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One thing they have going for them is the acceleration of downloading headers.
Other than that, I've never had Giganews be unresponsive, go down or slow down.

It may not be a real justification of the price since there are other alternatives but for the price you pay, you have the assurance that nothing will go wrong (except on that rare occasion).

they will lose customers and lower the price. watch you will see, until then just crack passwords to their site and bam free giganews.

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Originally Posted by JustDOSE

they will lose customers and lower the price. watch you will see, until then just crack passwords to their site and bam free giganews.

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What are you talking about? And your speculation is based upon....your opinion?

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Originally Posted by heiska

who cares? Only idiots are with them anyways.

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Originally Posted by link2009

i'm sorry but this post was completely ignorant and disrespectful.

....

Second of all, just because some individuals have more money than you, don't try to be condescending and ignorant.

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Whatever, dude. You just proved my point ;)

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Originally Posted by heiska

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Originally Posted by link2009

i'm sorry but this post was completely ignorant and disrespectful.

....

Second of all, just because some individuals have more money than you, don't try to be condescending and ignorant.

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Whatever, dude. You just proved my point ;)

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lol, why did that link guy get all butt hurt? lol he is raging like he will pay w/e giganews wants loool

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Originally Posted by heiska

Whatever, dude...

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Classic comeback from the witless moron.

Some of us happen to enjoy their impeccable services and don't fret about the cost of our Usenet subscription.

The increase in price happened just when MIMO became public.

Ive checked it out and tbh its one of the most shitty newsreaders ive ever seen in my life(i had experience with forte agent\newsbin pro\newsleecher\usenet explorer(the best as of now imho),ultraleecher and some others dont remember their names)

As to

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impeccable

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i have to say that giganews has been complying with DMCA noticies more and more often than astraweb recently.But in terms of stability and other things Giga is awesome

Astraweb have problems? Been using it for year and half and other than a few rare instances of slowdown, by a couple of megabits, it has been "impeccable" to coin a term used in this thread. Everything I download completes, all the time.

Giganews offer great service but for $35/month for any Usenet account is a little steep compared to the competition. At this rate, they are going to price themselves out of the market.

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Originally Posted by sandman_1

Astraweb have problems? Been using it for year and half and other than a few rare instances of slowdown, by a couple of megabits, it has been "impeccable" to coin a term used in this thread. Everything I download completes, all the time.

Giganews offer great service but for $35/month for any Usenet account is a little steep compared to the competition. At this rate, they are going to price themselves out of the market.

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Couldn't agree more. :yup:

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Originally Posted by heiska

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Originally Posted by link2009

i'm sorry but this post was completely ignorant and disrespectful.

....

Second of all, just because some individuals have more money than you, don't try to be condescending and ignorant.

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Whatever, dude. You just proved my point ;)

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I am not sure what point I proved but I surely do not admit to agreeing with your ignorant statement that only idiots use Giganews. I am slightly ashamed I am even responding to you, you don't even deserve a sentence.

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Originally Posted by JustDOSE

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Originally Posted by heiska

Whatever, dude. You just proved my point ;)

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lol, why did that link guy get all butt hurt? lol he is raging like he will pay w/e giganews wants loool

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Everywhere I see you post, you either insult someone or act like a complete child. I am not "butt hurt" nor am I "raging". I am merely stating the fact that Giganews offers a good service, as does Astraweb. I don't mind the price difference to be honest.

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Originally Posted by sandman_1

Astraweb have problems? Been using it for year and half and other than a few rare instances of slowdown, by a couple of megabits, it has been "impeccable" to coin a term used in this thread. Everything I download completes, all the time.

Giganews offer great service but for $35/month for any Usenet account is a little steep compared to the competition. At this rate, they are going to price themselves out of the market.

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Allow me to retort. While you've had no problems with Astraweb, I've had no problems with Giganews. I agree that both service providers offer great quality but I can say that Giganews is the innovator in the game.

They are the only ones that always increase their retention, pushing binaries to their limits. I applaud them for that and it is BECAUSE of that I support them. Maybe most of you pirate your way through movies, applications, games, ebooks, you name it but some of us need to support the individuals behind the scenes.

Just to clarify, all I am saying is that I know that most of my money will go into innovating a stronger, faster and better Usenet. I may be wrong but this is simply my opinion.

Next, Giganews has 819 days of retention, Astraweb has 810. Sure, it is a 9 day difference but it is a difference.

I enjoy downloading headers and Giganews' accelerated grabbing is more than great for me. (I have found no alternative, nor have I searched for one).

I get 50 connections with Giganews and 20 with Astraweb. That's right, with a full Duplex 2 x 100 Mbit connections, I actually take advantage of those 50 connections, which Astraweb does not offer.

And my last point is support. I've never dealt with Astraweb's support, but Giganews and their customer service have been great to me.

My understanding based on their website is that they are grandfathering people in at current prices who subscribe before the increase. Their website states "Upgrade before December 31st, 2010 to lock in your Diamond membership for $29.99."

I am locked in at a $19.99 USD special for the full retention, but not some of the diamond extras like VPN.

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Originally Posted by Skiz

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Originally Posted by heiska

Whatever, dude...

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Classic comeback from the witless moron.

Some of us happen to enjoy their impeccable services and don't fret about the cost of our Usenet subscription.

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lol Skiz, thats so wrong to fan that link guys flame :fst: i bet that made link felt validated.

I remember the time when Giganews had triple the retention of Astraweb, and much better completion -- and it didn't then cost that much more, either. Giganews used to be well worth the higher cost, no question. But now the price difference is greater, while the quality difference is much less. And that's a situation that leads to endless debate, maybe even more so than the Giganews vs. Newshosting debates of about 5 years ago.

I think this "price increase" might have been poor marketing on Giganews part, since instead of mixing things up, they could have simply created a new, top-level tier, which would have likely prevented all the complaints of this 'price increase': their unlimited + SSL service (minus the "free" VPN) is actually going down $5 in price, since SSL is now free. Also, bundling in a search engine could get them in trouble, and they might even be forced to filter out keywords, as Napster was required to do, and that could render the search service useless.


I just want to correct a few misconceptions regarding some of the claimed justifications for getting Giganews:

1. Header compression: All the major NSPs (Astraweb, Highwinds, etc) support header compression protocols, as do most commercial newsreaders (Newsbin Pro, Newsleecher, Usenet Explorer, Newsman, Agent, etc) as well as free add-on software such as Stunnel and Bintube Accelerator - that works with any newsreader to add compressed header support. Although Giganews was the first to offer header compression (through its own proprietary interface) a few years ago, header compression is now standard industry-wide.

2. 50 connections Giganews really hyped-up this "feature" as if it were somehow a big selling point, kicking off a sort of "connection war" among providers a year ago. For the *rare* situation that actually requires this many connections, there are plenty of decent low-cost providers that also offer 50 connections -- or even more -- at a fraction of the cost of Giganews.

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Originally Posted by zot

I think this "price increase" might have been poor marketing on Giganews part,

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it has nothing to do with marking... simple economics, they are funding themselves with their CURRENT users, their marketing consists of the words 'lock in'. Let me make it simple for you zot, back when light bulbs were first invented they were expensive then when many people bought them they became less expensive occasionally the price would go up a few cents if the company started making.. oh say filaments, are you with me? ok so once the light-bulb makers could manufacture all the parts for thier bulb and gone through price fluctuations,all the while utilizing their loyal customers, the price would stablize and that would be one damn good bulb, more were bought price drops company gets rich & secure while everyone is 'locked in'. same with giganews, thier making all the parts that fit perfectly together, its all about personalization of the usenet experience, they dont need to market because their are people like you. the only reason you see giganews everywhere is like the old saying 'if you want to see it bad enough you will see it everywhere' dont worry zot giganews isnt stalking you. giganews probably pays outa pocket 10grand a month for ads and yields a couple hundred thousand profit, and have about 10% of usenet users in pocket. :yup:

*cough* you ever read the package on your light-bulb zot? it says 'guaranteed' which means 'your locked in' gotta open your eyes brotha dont become a tool of the man.

@link2009

Uhh...wasn't trying to "compete" with Giganews bud. I even mentioned they are a great service. Do you work for Giganews or something? I mean you came off like a commercial for them.

And an extra 9 days retention, wow what is Astraweb ever going to do. Giganews is just killing Astraweb in retention./sarcasm 50 connections? 99% of people do not need 50 connections. They don't even need 20 connections. Header compression? Giganews doesn't have the monopoly on that either. 12mbps line and I can download headers +100mbps equivalent with Astraweb. Sorry bud, Giganews was top of the line years back but now they are just the same as others and more expensive.

Basically comes down to preference, if you want to blow the money on Giganews, then by all means do so. No one is going to care either way and it is your money.

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Originally Posted by sandman_1

@link2009

And an extra 9 days retention, wow what is Astraweb ever going to do. Giganews is just killing Astraweb in retention./sarcasm 50 connections? 99% of people do not need 50 connections. They don't even need 20 connections. Header compression? Giganews doesn't have the monopoly on that either. 12mbps line and I can download headers +100mbps equivalent with Astraweb. Sorry bud, Giganews was top of the line years back but now they are just the same as others and more expensive.

Basically comes down to preference, if you want to blow the money on Giganews, then by all means do so. No one is going to care either way and it is your money.

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Tend to agree here, there was a time back in the day when giganews was the "The NSP" with retention far exceeding that of other NSPs, excellent completion, and unique at the time, header compression. Today it just does not stack up that way anymore not even remotely...Astraweb has effectively matched the Giganews retention level, Astraweb has less incompletes and also has excellent reliability like giganews - and Astraweb does this all at a much lower price. - Oh and let's not forget providers like usenetserver that offer all the features of astraweb with slightly less retention at 700 days.

Basically the gap between what giganews service was to other providers and what they are now, service wise, is non existent. Giganews has blinded their customers into thinking that their kool-aid is the best, to the point that giganews customers have become mindless servants to gignews marketing and will open their wallets at any price...it's almost like they think that giganews cares about them and that gignews has convinced their customers they are going to pay more and that is for their own good :) Giganews, put simply, no longer has any other justification for the staggering prices they charge accept of course to make gobs of cash...my earnest hope is that the poor sleeping giganews drones will wake up and stop giving their money away.

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also has excellent reliability

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Simply not true

Ive had giganews for 3 years and astraweb for a year

Speed over period of time


-Giganews max out my 50(100 when i activate turbo service)mbit line 100% of time

-Astraweb had several problems in this department. Sometimes its speed is not stable, not so long ago it was 2 times lower than usual on all servers even with 20 connections where i used to achieve it with just 10-13.
Giganews?Never.
many users experienced it too while some of them didnt. Meaning like it or not gianews has better infrastucture

Giganews\Astraweb= 1:0

DMCA takedowns
- giganews has been taking down more of these recently
- astraweb almost doesnt have this issue

Giganews\Astraweb=0:1

Incompletes due to problems with post propagation and otehr issues not connected with DMCA takedowns

-I remember giganews having this problem long time ago.One time

- Astraweb had in my experience 2 times this problem concerning post propagation, sometimes very serious resulting in 100% unrepairable posts(the last one was raging a month or so ago). Mostly it was uploaders who suffered. I remember having to repost stuff due to this shit

Astraweb IS STILL HAVING PROPAGATION ISSUES AT A CERTAIN PERIODS OF TIME DURING A DAY. Fortunately not very serious but still

Giganews\Astraweb=1:0


Price
- Astraweb for the win
- Giganews sucks ballz

Giganews\Astraweb= 0:1

Customer service:
- Giganews's response is very fast
- Astraweb often doesnt answers ur tickets for several days

Giganews\Astraweb: 1:0


Questionable policy

-Astraweb: None whatsoever. U get what u pay for that is simple usenet access.

-Giganews: Dirty games with VPN service and unbearably LAME newsreader that sucks big time in order to justify their prices

Giganews\Astraweb=:0:1

thats it.

Total Tumbs Up\Down Rating:

Giganews/Astraweb:
3/ 3


NOBODY IS PERFECT

Nice comparison, Hypatia.

Another thing I've noticed is that about every couple of years, it seems that Astraweb gets hit by a massive hardware failure, and it takes them a few weeks to fix and get all the articles put back up. It seems that Giganews has a lot more article redundancy, so drive failures are hardly ever noticed. I think it was in late 2007 when Astraweb had drive arrays fail in both US and EU servers at the same time, and download speeds were slow while they transferred articles between servers to patch everything back. (Astraweb's tech support guy Steve talked about this) They never said anything about what happened last Christmas when they had their last major wipeout (which I never even noticed, but many others reported completion problems). Kind of predictable in a way, as the bigger any company gets, the less likely they are to openly talk about routine tech problems. (and Giganews has never even had a message page to list server issues)

The thing I wonder about is why more people don't combine accounts of 2 or more providers? Any single NSP is going to have problems of some kind at some time, but having a backup/fill server gives you the combined best qualities of each, while eliminating all the shortcomings of any single provider.

Zot your rambling on again. astraweb has never had " massive hardware failure", and astraweb doesnt transfer files between servers(no usenet host has ever posted binaries on thier servers even to "patch" them that would be illegal); dude do you even know what you post or are you just making long posts to feel smarter?

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Originally Posted by zot

The thing I wonder about is why more people don't combine accounts of 2 or more providers? Any single NSP is going to have problems of some kind at some time, but having a backup/fill server gives you the combined best qualities of each, while eliminating all the shortcomings of any single provider.

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excellent Hindsight

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Originally Posted by JustDOSE

Zot your rambling on again. astraweb has never had " massive hardware failure", and astraweb doesnt transfer files between servers(no usenet host has ever posted binaries on thier servers even to "patch" them that would be illegal); dude do you even know what you post or are you just making long posts to feel smarter?

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I don't have any hard facts on this, but I would rationalize that every usenet provider that has more than one server farm employs them as backup for each other, as this seems obviously the cheapest and most direct way of replacing missing articles due to such things as routine hard drive failures. If you doubt this, JustDOSE, then what other backup solutions would you recommend for storing 800 days worth (4+ petabytes) of retention -- tape archives?

Regarding Astraweb, I was only repeating what I remember Astraweb's tech support guy "stevef" had said on the Newsbin forums several years ago, in response to why download speeds had suddenly slowed. Those old discussion threads have been deleted, but I'm sure plenty of other people saw his post stating that Astraweb was at the time undertaking major trans-Atlantic data transfers between servers to restore missing articles.

I don't claim to have a perfect memory, so please feel free to prove me wrong, JustDOSE. Instead of just making baseless accusations, why don't you register at Newsbin forum and ask in the Astraweb section if Astraweb uses their UE server farm as a backup to their US server farm (and vice-versa)? Or you could even PM stevef and tell him that you believe Astraweb might be committing a crime by replacing missing articles by pulling copies from their other server location ... or whatever. :wacko:

http://forums.newsbin.com/viewforum.php?f=20

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Originally Posted by zot

The thing I wonder about is why more people don't combine accounts of 2 or more providers? Any single NSP is going to have problems of some kind at some time, but having a backup/fill server gives you the combined best qualities of each, while eliminating all the shortcomings of any single provider.

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yes.

for less then a giganews premium account, im subscribed to 2 unlimited usenet providers (readnews/supernews). not only do i get a total of 60 connections (not that i use them all) but, i get the added benefit of load balancing between them through my pfSense box. doing the same with giganews would cost over 50$.

i spend less then 20.

i started out with giganews back when i was a usenet newbie, and have not looked back since.

If Astraweb had a free trial period I'd give it a shot. I'm used to certain level of speed w/ Giganews so I'm not about to compromise that. If Astraweb is just as fast I'm out. Maybe I'll just risk the $15 and see what happens.

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Originally Posted by SirBigK

If Astraweb had a free trial period I'd give it a shot. I'm used to certain level of speed w/ Giganews so I'm not about to compromise that. If Astraweb is just as fast I'm out. Maybe I'll just risk the $15 and see what happens.

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I assumed by now just about everyone would know about the Astraweb Kleverig Special (@ news.astraweb.com/specials/kleverig-11.html ) It's the same service as their $15 account, but only $11 a month.

Although Astraweb does not offer free trials, they do give you the option of getting a full refund if you stop using the service and send them a cancellation notice within 24 hours of signing up.

And if you happen to be one of the tiny percentage of users who can't automatically max out using Astraweb, tech support can work with you in re-routing your path to avoid any bottlenecks.

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Originally Posted by sandman_1

@link2009

Uhh...wasn't trying to "compete" with Giganews bud. I even mentioned they are a great service. Do you work for Giganews or something? I mean you came off like a commercial for them.

And an extra 9 days retention, wow what is Astraweb ever going to do. Giganews is just killing Astraweb in retention./sarcasm 50 connections? 99% of people do not need 50 connections. They don't even need 20 connections. Header compression? Giganews doesn't have the monopoly on that either. 12mbps line and I can download headers +100mbps equivalent with Astraweb. Sorry bud, Giganews was top of the line years back but now they are just the same as others and more expensive.

Basically comes down to preference, if you want to blow the money on Giganews, then by all means do so. No one is going to care either way and it is your money.

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No, I do not work for Giganews.

This was not a discussion about who has more money to spend but merely weighing the facts of each service.

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Originally Posted by nntpjunkie

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Originally Posted by sandman_1

@link2009

And an extra 9 days retention, wow what is Astraweb ever going to do. Giganews is just killing Astraweb in retention./sarcasm 50 connections? 99% of people do not need 50 connections. They don't even need 20 connections. Header compression? Giganews doesn't have the monopoly on that either. 12mbps line and I can download headers +100mbps equivalent with Astraweb. Sorry bud, Giganews was top of the line years back but now they are just the same as others and more expensive.

Basically comes down to preference, if you want to blow the money on Giganews, then by all means do so. No one is going to care either way and it is your money.

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Tend to agree here, there was a time back in the day when giganews was the "The NSP" with retention far exceeding that of other NSPs, excellent completion, and unique at the time, header compression. Today it just does not stack up that way anymore not even remotely...Astraweb has effectively matched the Giganews retention level, Astraweb has less incompletes and also has excellent reliability like giganews - and Astraweb does this all at a much lower price. - Oh and let's not forget providers like usenetserver that offer all the features of astraweb with slightly less retention at 700 days.

Basically the gap between what giganews service was to other providers and what they are now, service wise, is non existent. Giganews has blinded their customers into thinking that their kool-aid is the best, to the point that giganews customers have become mindless servants to gignews marketing and will open their wallets at any price...it's almost like they think that giganews cares about them and that gignews has convinced their customers they are going to pay more and that is for their own good :) Giganews, put simply, no longer has any other justification for the staggering prices they charge accept of course to make gobs of cash...my earnest hope is that the poor sleeping giganews drones will wake up and stop giving their money away.

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I suppose this is true. I tend to switch news providers quite often. I find Giganews and Astraweb to be close to par.

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Originally Posted by SirBigK

If Astraweb had a free trial period I'd give it a shot. I'm used to certain level of speed w/ Giganews so I'm not about to compromise that. If Astraweb is just as fast I'm out. Maybe I'll just risk the $15 and see what happens.

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What level of speed are you talking about?

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Originally Posted by SirBigK

If Astraweb had a free trial period I'd give it a shot. I'm used to certain level of speed w/ Giganews so I'm not about to compromise that. If Astraweb is just as fast I'm out. Maybe I'll just risk the $15 and see what happens.

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astraweb is only 11$ and is notice it says "No Speed Limits"... yea its fast
here is the 11$ link: http://www.news.astraweb.com/specials/kleverig-11.html

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Originally Posted by JustDOSE

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SirBigK

If Astraweb had a free trial period I'd give it a shot. I'm used to certain level of speed w/ Giganews so I'm not about to compromise that. If Astraweb is just as fast I'm out. Maybe I'll just risk the $15 and see what happens.

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astraweb is only 11$ and is notice it says "No Speed Limits"... yea its fast
here is the 11$ link: http://www.news.astraweb.com/specials/kleverig-11.html

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There was a few guys over on the Newsbin Pro forums a while back that were getting 250Mbps+ on Astraweb with a fiber connection and Ram drive so if that isn't fast enough then I don't know what is lol.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SirBigK

If Astraweb had a free trial period I'd give it a shot. I'm used to certain level of speed w/ Giganews so I'm not about to compromise that. If Astraweb is just as fast I'm out. Maybe I'll just risk the $15 and see what happens.

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You should never pay for Usenet unless you're able to max out your speed. Ever.

Caps on bandwidth with Usenet service would just be... amateur.

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Originally Posted by Skiz

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Originally Posted by heiska

Who cares? Only idiots are with them anyways.

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Or people like me that are willing to pay a few dollars more for peace of mind, and knowing that every single NZB I download will complete. Every. Single. Time.

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And every single NZB wouldn't download everytime with Astraweb? At a much cheaper cost.