Cheapest ever? $5.00 Unlimited Usenet from Thundernews

I think this is the best deal ever in the history of Usenet providers...

NGR has posted that Thundernews is doing a Black Friday special for all monthly accounts for $5 bucks for the lifetime of the account.

It shows the Unlimited plan for $5.00 too!

From Thundernews:
- 710 days binary retention
- 1,265 days of text retention
- 99%+ completion rate
- 50 connections
- Free 256-bit SSL
- Free News Rover newsreader
- US and European servers
- 24/7 tech support

Link:
http://www.thundernews.com/thunderne...iews_offer.php

thats the best deal ive seen
http://www.newsgroupreviews.com/thun...al-coupon.html

is highwinds worth even 5 bucks a month?! :P

Amazing indeed. :O

Although a NSP can offer a super-low price by using a cheap, low retention server, that is not the case here. As a Highwinds reseller, Thundernews is paying the same price for its feed as other Highwinds resellers. So how can they offer it for half the price as the next closest competitor who is selling what is essentially an identical service?

The fact is, they can't -- at least not unless they find a way to reduce the average cost (usage) per person. That's just basic economics.

These usenet "fantastic deals" are nothing new. Does anyone remember a usenet provider called 100 Proof News? They made a name for themselves a few years ago by offering the cheapest "unlimited" price in the business -- and then throttling or kicking out all customers who dared to exceed their secret monthly limit. They could keep prices very cheap because only the lowest-usage customers remained on their service (the rest quit in disgust). Not a recommended long-term business strategy, as demonstrated by the fact that 100 Proof News is no longer around.

Anyway, ThunderNews is the same company as NewsDemon, which in the past many users on its cheapest "unlimited" plan have accused of throttling their speed.

I would encourage everyone to jump on this "too good to be true" $5/month "unlimited" plan, and then download as much as you possibly can your first month. Then let us know how many gigs you were able to download before the throttle kicks in and your speed slows to a crawl. :lol:

I've just signed up. 4€ is too cheap not to try.
I'm on a 30mb/s fiber connection, I'll give some feedback tomorrow when I put their name to the test.

zot will you just shut the hell up for once in your lame life:yup:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cabalo

I've just signed up. 4€ is too cheap not to try.
I'm on a 30mb/s fiber connection, I'll give some feedback tomorrow when I put their name to the test.

---

same

Zot, i agree=) we already have providers that store stuff older than xx days on super slow servers resulting in super slow speed.

We are already facing the consecuences of sort of cheap astraweb policy when millions of lemmings bended over their infrastructure lol

Yeah, this does in fact sound too good to be true. And there's nothing I hate more than slow download speed from usenet servers.

Yea, I got the deal, I got it. Knew it would not last. Deepest condolence to those of you who showed up late. :D

Some feedback:

So far I've downloaded around 60Gb and it always maximizes my connection at around 12 threads with a combined total of 3.7Mb/s.
The oldest NZB I've downloaded was 450 days old, which came corrupted, and my IPv6 backup servers managed to complete it.

Quite a good deal so far, imo.

I've been using it as well (big thanks to klorox for the heads up!) and I'm very satisfied with what I'm getting for the money.

The retention is building up to the 711~ days they claim it seems. That doesn't bother me since I can use other sources to find old files in the meantime. There is not compression for headers (at least on the version of NL I'm using) and the header download is slow from the US server, but these small problems are easily worked around: use the EU server for headers and/or use nzbs for new stuff.

Download speeds max my modest home connection easily, even from the EU server.

So here is my feedback after a few weeks using Thundernews:
Speed is really good. I get about 7 MB/s. And I am on a 1 zillion Mbps line at an Ivy League school, so that is probably the maximum speed anyone will ever get.
Retention is OK, I don't care much anyway. Seriously, 600 days and 700 days, what's the difference?
Completion is HORRIBLE. I thought it was ok at first, but then when I checked the logs of Newsleecher, it turned out that my fill server (Astraweb) was filling non stop. The entire page was RED.
So yea, in general, Thunder is pretty good. If you have a fill server, that is.

Sounds like a pretty good deal.

It all depends on how much you're downloading. That puts you at $60 a year. Looking a block accounts $60 gives your roughly 600GB through block accounts(Blocknews).

For the average user 600gb will more than fulfill your needs. So I've gone to blocks, but then again I don't download everything in HD.

-Mutantx

Usenet sucks ,stick on BT

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by becomehokage

Usenet sucks ,stick on BT

---

Let's not go offtopic here.
There's a thread to discuss that, exactly at that very BT section. You can express there which you think are the pros and cons from each source.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by becomehokage

Usenet sucks ,stick on BT

---

It doesn't "suck". You may be too dim to comprehend the basic concepts, but it most certainly does not suck. It isn't like Bittorrent where you can learn everything you need to know in an hour and you're off and running. It does take some work and it does take longer to learn and experience everything there is to know, but it's well worth it.

Usenet was around way before private BT trackers. It predates them by some twenty years and releases of apps, TV programs, and the latest films traditionally go to Usenet first. It's always been that way. Usenet and its numerous groups, has many, many more uploaders than any private torrent site. Now I'm not saying that some BT trackers don't have uploaders that cap TV shows or crack programs and release them exclusively to the site but Usenet is the place for getting releases first. You have to know the right groups, of course, but once you've got your favorite groups entrenched in your newsreader of choice, you'll find everything you need and will be able to download it sooner and faster than if you relied on your private tracker.

Using Giganews and Newsleecher, I have 900+ days of content to download* at max speeds, which downloads, fixes, and extracts itself.

* As an example, Newzbin can provide me with approximately 420,000 posts of content** whilst the average on my private trackers is maybe 10,000-20,000. Usenet search engines reveal literally hundreds of thousands of files available.

** That's new and old content. At max speed. All the time. With no need to upload.

There really is no comparison.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Skiz

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by becomehokage

Usenet sucks ,stick on BT

---

It doesn't "suck". You may be too dim to comprehend the basic concepts, but it most certainly does not suck. It isn't like Bittorrent where you can learn everything you need to know in an hour and you're off and running. It does take some work and it does take longer to learn and experience everything there is to know, but it's well worth it.

Usenet was around way before private BT trackers. It predates them by some twenty years and releases of apps, TV programs, and the latest films traditionally go to Usenet first. It's always been that way. Usenet and its numerous groups, has many, many more uploaders than any private torrent site. Now I'm not saying that some BT trackers don't have uploaders that cap TV shows or crack programs and release them exclusively to the site but Usenet is the place for getting releases first. You have to know the right groups, of course, but once you've got your favorite groups entrenched in your newsreader of choice, you'll find everything you need and will be able to download it sooner and faster than if you relied on your private tracker.

Using Giganews and Newsleecher, I have 900+ days of content to download* at max speeds, which downloads, fixes, and extracts itself.

* As an example, Newzbin can provide me with approximately 420,000 posts of content** whilst the average on my private trackers is maybe 10,000-20,000. Usenet search engines reveal literally hundreds of thousands of files available.

** That's new and old content. At max speed. All the time. With no need to upload.

There really is no comparison.

---

nevermind the cost factor of course;).Not that it's necessarily not worth it, just saying...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by slocker

nevermind the cost factor of course;).Not that it's necessarily not worth it, just saying...

---

As the first post shows - you can attain service for as little as around $5/month.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by klorox

I think this is the best deal ever in the history of Usenet providers...

NGR has posted that Thundernews is doing a Black Friday special for all monthly accounts for $5 bucks for the lifetime of the account.

It shows the Unlimited plan for $5.00 too!

From Thundernews:
- 710 days binary retention
- 1,265 days of text retention
- 99%+ completion rate
- 50 connections
- Free 256-bit SSL
- Free News Rover newsreader
- US and European servers
- 24/7 tech support

Link:
http://www.thundernews.com/thunderne...iews_offer.php

---

Awesome i just went for 100GB/month ssl unlimited BW for £3.25 per month. Thanx ;)

Funny to see this thread pop up, since my friends all got our Black Friday plans cancelled on us recently. They just stopped charging us and deleted our accounts. When we emailed support we were all told we were flagged for abuse. Apparently using the service is grounds for abuse. For me it was a backup server and rarely used. I just noticed my logins failed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zot

Although a NSP can offer a super-low price by using a cheap, low retention server, that is not the case here. As a Highwinds reseller, Thundernews is paying the same price for its feed as other Highwinds resellers. So how can they offer it for half the price as the next closest competitor who is selling what is essentially an identical service?

The fact is, they can't -- at least not unless they find a way to reduce the average cost (usage) per person. That's just basic economics.

These usenet "fantastic deals" are nothing new. Does anyone remember a usenet provider called 100 Proof News? They made a name for themselves a few years ago by offering the cheapest "unlimited" price in the business -- and then throttling or kicking out all customers who dared to exceed their secret monthly limit. They could keep prices very cheap because only the lowest-usage customers remained on their service (the rest quit in disgust). Not a recommended long-term business strategy, as demonstrated by the fact that 100 Proof News is no longer around.

Anyway, ThunderNews is the same company as NewsDemon, which in the past many users on its cheapest "unlimited" plan have accused of throttling their speed.

I would encourage everyone to jump on this "too good to be true" $5/month "unlimited" plan, and then download as much as you possibly can your first month. Then let us know how many gigs you were able to download before the throttle kicks in and your speed slows to a crawl. :lol:

---

seen this many times with highwinds resellers and reported many times by ISP's members who get lumbered with highwinds NG's. Even seen it when highwinds took over other NSP's services. Often it was shite from the day of transfer, a few days here and there where it improved briefly, then settled on a service with low speed, poor retention and shite completeness.
I see the deal has now ended - don't worry folks, you won't be missing anything unless you wanted massive downloads of recent stuff for a short period, and hits from your decent service to complete them. Is it really worth the hassle?

Spend 2 hours a month stacking shelves at your local supermarket on minimum wage instead of hours p'ing about with these and you could pay for a good service.