Longest retention

[EyeBaller]

What most of the 'newcomers' to Usenet don't realize is that... what you pay, isn't as important, as where you subscribe.

Astraweb claims to have their own servers (i.e - they are not a reseller), if that's true, then they are the only provider (in my 10 years of Usenet experience) that have 'incomplete' nzb's.

I've never had one with Giganews, or any of their 'resellers'.

If you can only afford (or are only willing to pay) $11 a month for access, so be it. But stop trying to tell us (that know better) that Astraweb is the best.

If money is really an issue, NewsDemon has an unlimited $10.95 account. According to the info I have, they're a Highwinds reseller.

Firstly, I never said Astraweb were the best. I said they were best value for money. You can argue the same for Newsdemon or the others that are hovering around that price - better value for money.

Secondly, I really don't know what you tried to download that's incomplete from Astraweb. I haven't had anything that is incomplete (or unrepairable) with Astraweb in the 1-2 years I've been using them.

Again, each to their own in terms of what you want to pay (it doesn't have to be an issue about what you can afford, I don't know why you keep making that point), that's what the forum is for, people to give their opinions for both sides.

[zot]

Many people prepaid for Astraweb's 1-year plan @$8/month, so they're locked in. But that need not be a problem even for anyone getting unrepairable incompletes -- all it needs is to set up the newsreader with a 2nd backup server (the first backup server being Astraweb's *other* EU or US server). A newsreader such as Usenet Explorer lets you assign a priority (choice of 5, either flexible or strict) to each server in the list, saving the more expensive services for last. .

For those people committed to Astraweb who are experiencing incomplete files, I recommend getting a $3/5GB Blocknews or Usenet-News block account and setting it up as secondary (fill) server -- an inexpensive solution that should solve the problem for good..

I have not run into any of these supposedly-epidemic incomplete files on Astraweb (I don't download HDTV or Bluray) but even so, I could just get the missing parts from one of my other 2 block accounts. But first I'd want to see if switching off SSL or reducing the numner of connections makes a difference. Although I could easily do it, I chose not to set up backup servers in the newsreader because I prefer to know when articles go missing, so I can experiment to find out if the problem is on the server end (& both UE & US servers have the same parts missing) or a result of dropped packets due to a poor connection/SSL malfunction.It seems there's been no public comment from Astraweb on this topic of incompletes, has anyone sent in a support ticket and got a reply?

[reg036]

are remembering how bad other usenet companies were 2, 3, 4, 5, or more years ago and switched to Giganews to avoid all the hassle and frustration of those other providers.

Man I feel old......my GN account has been active for ten years now....oh yeah that 90 day retention was great back then, using agent to scroll through endless headers to find the gems out there... back to now........retention over 300+ is kinda norm, pick whats in your price range and stick to it, though GN will give you extra downloads for time with them. HTH

[Beck38]

I'm not completely sure as to GN on this, as with the lowest account level there one really doesn't have access to the complete server - although I do have access to a GN powered search server through my News Rover account...

BUT, to get to the point, I completed (with no errors or skips) an nzb that had articles just older than 492 days on Astra yesterday. Actually, I was pretty sure that I'd hit something 'missing', but no! However, the GN search server couldn't come up with any pieces of it whatsoever. But I really don't know if it really was completely 'rolled off' on GN.

That is pretty ridiculous! 500 Days...! It wasn't that long ago that 6 months or even a year was really something, now they're heading toward TWO years of retention.

Of course, what it means is, we (read: 'I'), can put things off and off and off....