newsbin.com

I haven't used Newsbin a long while, truth be told. I was using *nix for ages, and when I came back to Windows 7 I just carried on using Sab. Anyway, I just installed the v6 beta, and it's very much faster than the older versions. Good job! However, I do have a couple of points I'd like to raise if that's OK.

1) Current speed is (as has always been the case in NBP) over-reporting. I'm on a 50Mbps cable connection and consistently get 6.32MB/sec (50.56Mbps). However, Newsbin reports the current speed as 6.7MB/sec (53.6Mbps) which is clearly incorrect. I'm guessing this is a mix-up converting the original bps or kbps figure to KB/sec and MB/sec between kilo (1000) and kibi (1024)? Not the end of the world, but it would be nice for the speed to be correctly reported.

Actual speed (as shown in Networx):


Speed reported at the same time in NBP:


2) Adding a +1 to some other posts in here, please bring back the PAR info/tab so we can see the files, their completion, any repair (with ETA) and the unrar process.

3) Finally, again adding a +1 to other posts, please do address the grey space at the top of the app. I like the new UI, but don't use Search or Thumbnails so this space is just wasted. Yes I can drag the bottom tab up, but that defeats the object and stretches everything else (connections, files) out too far. Doing it the 'old' way with connections, logs and files on the bottom half and the download tab/space at the top showing files in the queue etc was very much preferred.

Otherwise, great improvements since the early v5s (when I last used the app) and definitely, absolutely much faster than it was. Keep up the good work, and sorry for 'moaning' so much above.

It tries to show the same speed as task manager. I suppose this is raw network speed which means a couple percent of overhead isn't factored in.

As for 2, not if I can help it. I see the repair taking place right there on the download list. If you right click and do "properties" on a parent item that has a par, you can see current PAR status.

Fedora_Guy wrote:2) Adding a +1 to some other posts in here, please bring back the PAR info/tab so we can see the files, their completion, any repair (with ETA) and the unrar process.

I see this coming up a number of times, but I do not see the point in bringing back the old tab. The new treatment of showing this in the Download queue by the progress bar color (yellow=repairing, green=unpacking) is already more feedback than the old AutoPar tab gave. Not saying there is no room for improvement, but do not see why attempting to bring the old tab back would help.

3) Finally, again adding a +1 to other posts, please do address the grey space at the top of the app. I like the new UI, but don't use Search or Thumbnails so this space is just wasted. Yes I can drag the bottom tab up, but that defeats the object and stretches everything else (connections, files) out too far. Doing it the 'old' way with connections, logs and files on the bottom half and the download tab/space at the top showing files in the queue etc was very much preferred.

Since the new UI lets you put any tab at any postion (and provides more selection options), surely this is just a matter of you arranging the tabs how you would like them?

itimpi wrote:Since the new UI lets you put any tab at any postion (and provides more selection options), surely this is just a matter of you arranging the tabs how you would like them?

I honest-to-God hadn't thought of that lol Works great, thanks. Sorry for that, it's a bit like jumping from XP to Vista/7, this... great improvements, just a case of sussing out the rather different UI. It'd be nice if you could change the speed monitor to reflect actual throughput and not just rely on task manager Quade, but it's not the end of the world as I said. Thanks for the speedy replies, as always.