Well, I used to be a hardcore public torrent man, but I had a couple ISP security breaches that have left me searching for an alternative. And the idea of extra speed was apealing as well.
I have put a lot of time in the last couple days trying to figure out this whole newsgroup thing, and here is sort of a guide from what I have found to be the best noob approach
1: Client
I started out by acquiring a handful of free newsreaders,as well as a trial of a couple free ones. Verdict: i don't see any reason to use anything other than grabit. Its free, and works flawlessly, seems to be designed well, and
2: Server
I originally tried my charter ISP's newsgroup server, and I was getting around 40-50kb/s. Then I performed a futile search for some free ones... don't bother. I switched to a Giganews trial and was averaging around 900-1000Kb/s and used up my 10Gb trial in a matter of a few hours... Crazy fast and awesome! So a pay news server is definitely worth it. I'd still like to experiment with some of the other premium ones that are a bit cheaper, but giganews performs very well!
3: Finding Files
This is where i hit some snags, until i found this site. I have checked out a lot of sites to find files, like binsearch, newzleech, and a couple of in-client search engines. I didn't really like any of these, the file lists seemed convoluted and limited. I still haven't had a chance to try out Newzbin, but The NZB section on this site is mighty fine, as is the site NZBmatrix. Those are the two best ways to find the files you want that I have found. I am still looking for better ways, so feel free to suggest!
I still have a few files that I could find on torrent, but not on newsgroups, but it also goes the other way, so I think all in all , the switch will be good for me. Now i just need a bigger hard drive. I can download a gigantic 720p - 1080p movie in about the same time as i used to download a standard divx 700Mb movie on torrent... not bad.
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