newsbin.com

We're considering a new design for stored headers and are wondering how many groups on average are being monitored. Please help us out by participating in this poll.

I do not bother to download headers as using www.newzbin.com in 'raw usenet' mode allows me to peruse /search a group without incurring the overhead of downloading headers. If the newzbin site was closed down (again) I would probably end up downloading headers from a small number (1-30 range) of relatively low activity groups.

How many results do they return? I was thinking about us implementing something like that using our search.

i normally update about 15 groups on a regular basis, by this i would say about 4 or 5 times a week

Quade wrote:How many results do they return? I was thinking about us implementing something like that using our search.

The Newzbin 'raw' modes are rather like Newsbin post lists - available in either compacted or uncompacted mode. You can set the number of results per page (up to 200) and can have an unlimited number of pages. You can also apply search criteria to be used as filters. All the work is done server side so response is virtuall instantaneous. Any entries of interest can be marked for inclusion into a NZB file, or bookmarked for a later download via a NZB file.

Another NZB only user here. itimpi is right on the money, while sites like Newzbin continue to offer raw usenet browsing and searching, downloading headers manually is just a waste of time. During Newzbin's recent downtime, I also discovered binsearch.info and nzbindex.nl, both offer much better retention than Newzbin and nzbindex's search engine is far more flexible than Newzbin's. They're also both free.

about 190, download headers several times a week.

I have 152 subscribed to, of which, 50 of them are monitored usually daily, but definitely 3 times a week. The rest I check on a biweekly basis, if that.

The only issue I have found with groups is that a few of the super large groups, ie: a.b.boneless, are essentially impossible to download as Newsbin, (or any other Newsreader for that matter), stalls due to the sheer size of the group. As a result anything posts from those groups have to come from NZB search engines.

The trick to boneless is to keep the post list closed for the group, right click "download all headers" and then just let it run without opening it. Then set a reasonable display age, 30 days say or less. Then load boneless up one month at a time with the month loader dropdown.

I also use NZB's along with internet search. This seems to work fairly well for me. Header download is just too slow on my clunker setup. Perhaps if I ever get an i7 speedster, I will revisit the header option, but for now......it works for me.

Subscribe to 61 groups. Headers update every 4 hours and Newsbin runs constantly on my system. With headers stored for many of the largest groups for 250 days (boneless, dvd, mp3, etc.) it allows me to do local searches
within Newsbin all the time. I usually find what I'm looking for. Combine that with UNS global search and I'm a happy camper. If it's too easy everyone will do it and then it will end.

I use about 30 groups, and generally check them each day.

I am currently subscribed to 62 groups and update them daily, that includes all the big bin groups. Boneless, ath, nl, and all the HD groups. I try to stay ahead of giganews in terms of stored headers, currently at 900 days.

Boneless is one of the groups I never ever update, and only use newzbin or binsearch to find files in. Last time I did, took 45 minutes for it to sort itself out, even with doing month by month.

I'll have to give yer trick a try, Quade, maybe it will improve.

23

i have 106 subscibed groups
i use about 10 on a consistent daily basis that i update, others i update as needed, otherwise its nzb's.
misread the question, subtract a 106 and add a 10. don't want to skew the results.

I subscribe to 54 groups but on two different servers, so thats 108 - my ISP has free newsgroups but only 7 days retention - so I use Easynews as a fill server. All updated about 4 times a day.

None, I use Newsbin Internet Search

24

34 groups
although the focus is on 7 anime groups which get updated once a week, but the setup for those groups is Select All, Download All and then do other things.
Only 1 server (GN)

For me the performance 'need' lies in the loading of groups and the ability to search for strings at a nice speed (fails because of windows memory management).

3 groups as well as using newsbin search plus nzbmatrix and now newzbin after reading this post

There's one I check (almost) every day, 4 I check at least once a week and another 5 or 6 I check about once a month.

About seventy, but I'm using Newsbin Internet Search for a few years now, so basicaly I don't download headers.

Well, it used to be about 20-30 groups that I regularly (minimum of once a week) downloaded from, and then use an NZB site for the remainder of what I might look for.

Recently I realized that some of the things I was now looking for actually existed, despite the three NZB sites I generally visited not showing them (one site had most of what I was interested in and was a reasonable one-time 'lifetime' membership, the other two are free; all are 'cheaper' NZB search sites thanks to my financial situation). And since I often seem to be 'late to the party' for some of what I'm interested in, I'm playing catch-up, having not used Newsbin anywhere remotely up to its potential (despite first registering it in 1997 so having it 'a while').

So I purged groups that no longer seem to produce anything worthwhile, and added a series of groups that seemed to have a wide range of things in them that I'd found stuff on I wanted - and got headers for the full age range of my usenet provider (600 days) [took over 24 hours for boneless]. But I looked and found that my SPOOL_V1 directory is over 13GB now. So I'm seriously considering whether to massively cut back on what I keep checking regularly (though I suppose if I download headers daily it's never going to be a massive chore, just a very big SPOOL directory).

Oh, and while Newsbin isn't on 24/7 like with some people, I DO have it on at least once a day for an hour or two.

The actual number varies depending on a few factors. For groups I don't download headers I use one of the free index sites.

One feature I would love to see, if possible, is for a single group's header download to use more than one connection. Say set the # as a parameter and then newsbin gets a number of header blocks at one time, one from each connection to the header server for that group.

The reason for this is that even with the compression that is now built in the maximum speed I can get as reported by newsbin is 2-4Mbit/s and trying to get *all* headers from a v.large group is going to take time. Over here each connection to giganews seems to average out at about 400Kbits/s and that is similar with the two ISPs I use. For the cable account I need 40-50 connections to max out the 20Mbit/s link most of the time and the 12Mbit/s ADSL requires like 25 to max it out. If I could get faster speeds per server connection then there would not be a need for the feature of multiple server connections for a single group header download.

I have tried to use the post download and local search option within Newsbin however like some others have said, it's quite painful when you go to search through all the posts to find what you are looking for since each search takes a long time. I have noticed that the size filters also seem to not work for some reason. It displays headers that contain files much smaller than the min specified and even the max too. I think something should be done to speed up local searches. Even after the initial search, unlike the program says, I still get terribly slow searches. I'm using an Intel Core I7 processor with 6GB of RAM running Windows 7.

It displays headers that contain files much smaller than the min specified and even the max too.

There's an option that makes small text files bypass the size filters.

I think you'll be happy with the changes in 6 that address this.

I went from daily updating 25 groups to once a week 14 groups. That was 2 years ago. And for the last year I've been using binsearch. I may update a group or two once a week or so.

115. Including the big ones.

I just took my PC to 16 GB so Newsbin is pretty happy.

PS: With 8 GB I had the problem of Newsbin stalling (for ~1/2 hour) when initially adding messages to the download list. That problem is now gone. I do see the memory usage spike (from 7.5 GB to around 10.5) when I add to the download list. This lasts for less then 1 minute, then the memory returns to 7.5 and everything chugs along.

Just to clarify my 1-30 groups response:

For the most part I use the integrated Newzbin Search feature, in most cases this is more than adequate.. however, in the instances that I actually use groups, I do download the headers and generally the newsgroups I view have an average of around 100k viewable messages using compact mode. Picking one at random from my list, it has just over 82k viewable going back 600 days with the most recent being around 3.5k going back 30 days.

One, unrelated, feature I'd like see changed/added is that you don't force me to use Internet Explorer when I click on the MOTD links. I hate IE, I think it is the worst browser to have ever graced the computing world.. I have Firefox installed and is set as my default browser but when I click on the links in the MOTD, including the one that is asking me to take part in the poll, it immediately tries to load the URL through IE. This is something you have hard-coded into your MOTD URL passer. The reason I am bringing it up here is because it is this poll that has alerted me, again, to this annoyance.

The number of groups varies from 5 to 20,

There's about 10 groups I update and check every day.. for everything else I use binsearch

Only 9, and its usually JPG's or CDG files I'm getting

light487 wrote:One, unrelated, feature I'd like see changed/added is that you don't force me to use Internet Explorer when I click on the MOTD links. I hate IE, I think it is the worst browser to have ever graced the computing world.. I have Firefox installed and is set as my default browser but when I click on the links in the MOTD, including the one that is asking me to take part in the poll, it immediately tries to load the URL through IE. This is something you have hard-coded into your MOTD URL passer. The reason I am bringing it up here is because it is this poll that has alerted me, again, to this annoyance.

this has been brought up numerous times even with v5

I have 80 set up in NB. They're divided up into six groups of groups, four of which I look at a few times per week. I open the group of groups rather than the individual groups. Usually I'm wathcing for something interesting to show up, so downloading the headers makes sense for me. The download is about 1.3 gigs per day, but since I switched to FIOS this finishes in about 1 minute. For online searches I generally use the EasyNews web app.

About 20-25 Groups, and I try and keep them under several (4-5) group headings.

105

20 groups currently subscribed, and checked every two to three days.

Otherwise I use one of the index services.

I'll also add my name to the list of those who hate being forced to use IE. In fact, this message
would not come up in IE. I had to cut and paste the address in FF.

Thanks for a great product

I am subscribed to appr 40 groups but regularly visit only 5 of them. I don't download new headers often as I am subscribed to Giganews which currently has 760 days retention + Newsguy that has 365 days. So I don't need to update the groups very often. I still remember when posts were available only a week or two on Newsguy. Boy what a lot of work it was to keep oneself updated!!

Less than 30, definately. (actually less than 5 on a rugular basis)

10

11

31-100

It fluctuates a little, but around 110 on a daily basis, including several large groups.

1-25 groups

I only use NZBs these days...

Approx 20

I'm in the 201 to 300 group. I like to browse through postings in search of interesting items and the downloaded headers allow me to do so at my leisure and with a variety of filters or not.

65 but I often find that the Internet Search works just as good and better in some ways. I'll probably keep them, at least 50 or so. Filters make handling that many not so difficult. Thanks...