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

[nntpjunkie]

@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.

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.

[Hypatia]

also has excellent reliability

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

[zot]

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.

[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?

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.

excellent Hindsight

[zot]

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?

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.

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

[ericab]

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.

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.

[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.

[zot]

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.

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.

[link2009]

@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.

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.

@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.

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.

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

[sandman_1]

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.

What level of speed are you talking about?