OT: Recommendations for good news readers

I use 40tude Dialog. I rate it very highly. It is jam-packed with features, and is to some extent customisable by way of scripting add-ons. The filtering rules are superb.

There are a couple of downsides. Firstly, the original author, one Marcus Moenig, seems to have gone to ground over the last few months. It's open source, and there are one or two other enthusiasts who are continuing with development.

The other, like any new software, there is a fairly steep learning curve to be able to make best use of it. If you stick with it, I'm sure you'll ask yourself whyever didn't you move to it years ago!

Thanks Richard I'll give it a good look over. Juno

That's because I know how to get under your killfile, sweety. As I've been repeatedly telling you, all you have to do is send me naked pics of you and the spam will stop. ..... *sigh* ..... Is that so difficult to understand?

I use Agent a lot. It costs about 30 bucks, but it's worth it. 40tude is sort of like a free version of Agent, but it lacks some features. However, if all you're going to need it for is text messages, then d/l

If you want to filter out my direct posts, just kill anything that has a "@budweiser.com" in the author. As far as the threads I funnel into alt.sewing, though, I think you'll have to killfile them individually. ..... Sorry ..... well, really I'm not sorry :-)

I liked Agent until my latest upgrade -- the "improved" version had a whole new interface for no benefit whatsoever. I got used to most of its little foibles, but it still annoys me that 3.2/32.830 freezes up the entire computer whenever it has to wait for a response from the server -- the computer never freezes when Agent is *doing* something, only while it's waiting!

Nonetheless, I stick to it -- changing programs would mean yet another new interface with no compensating benefits, and I haven't found any other newsreader with timed filters that will remove themselves when no longer needed. Self-removing filters are particularly important in news.answers, where I kill-file everything so that I can tell when somebody posts something new, but I like to be reminded of FAQs a year or three after I read them or decide not to read them.

Joy Beeson

I use Xnews a good little program with good features and it supports most of the common encoding schemes.

Juno wrote in news:tUNJj.72205$D_3.53681 @bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net:

Thanks for the sugestions. I think I have solved my problem for now. I'd rather not say how since the children seem to be on spring break and I don't want to knowing give them anything new to work with. Juno