Regretting paying for Newsbin

[scymitar]

I never had any trouble loading headers when I used other news readers, even the old BNR 2 would effortlessly load a year's worth of headers, but Newsbin really struggles, it takes forever to load headers into the list and when it does i can't add filter as it just hangs. What a useless program.

[Quade]

What version are you using?

What kind of machine?

[scymitar]

Latest version. Windows 7 quad core, 4 gigs ram. it won't even add files to the download queue, just ticks them and....nothing. Even xnews performs better that this and its free, I think I will just write off the money I spent and go back to that. And jeepers why does it take so long to add a file to the download queue?

[scymitar]

Sucks that I went with the reviews and paid for it before testing it, silly. Have gone back to xnews, does simply for free what newsbin struggles to do for 20$ and its an old program. Lesson learned, adieu newsbin.

[Quade]

Edit: Dooh! Ha I was going to post this earlier but, forgot to hit "Submit" button. Oh well, don't want to waste it.

I assume you mean 6.34.

If you look down at the status bar, you'll see a line that says "Cache". If you see a number in Parens "(XX)" , that number represents the records that are currently being imported into the header database. Until that hits 0 (and goes away) it won't load or add to download at full speed. Basically, what happens is you have something feeding the DB and trying to read from it at the same time. I suspect that's why you're seeing slow performance. This seems to happen the first time you download headers because there's just a flood of headers

That's my current theory anyway. When I'm downloading headers at 600 Mbps, mine backs up. When all the groups are caught up and I'm just updating for the day, it's typically inserting in real time (meaning no number in parens).

[scymitar]

With xnews....double click and download straight away......newsbin....add to download queue and wait wait wait wait wait. Not worth the money.

[TMM]

With xnews....double click and download straight away......newsbin....add to download queue and wait wait wait wait wait. Not worth the money.

completely disagree never had any issues
personally, I think this piece of software is one of the best in terms of actually listening to its users very quick support even though I'd never really had a serious issue extremely fast software doesn't it doesn't slow your computer down. It does everything you could ever want headers nzbs even a built-in optional search feature, which is excellent. By the way , but sadly you are too impatient to let the initial headers download. Once again I would urge you to keep trying and not to give up this truly is the world's best binary newsreader

[scymitar]

Really? Xnews downloads just as fast, headers load instantly, articles download instantly, apply a filter and it instantly filters. Newsbin, took 10 minutes to load, added a filter, 10 minutes to reload, clicked to download an article waited 5 minutes for it to appear in the list. How is that better? Xnews...faster and less resource hungry, newsbin....slow and greedy.

[TMM]

Really? Xnews downloads just as fast, headers load instantly, articles download instantly, apply a filter and it instantly filters. Newsbin, took 10 minutes to load, added a filter, 10 minutes to reload, clicked to download an article waited 5 minutes for it to appear in the list. How is that better? Xnews...faster and less resource hungry, newsbin....slow and greedy.

all right, I will test your theory . I will run them side by side and make a video posted on YouTube for everybody to see. I think I know which one will win, but I am keeping an open mind

[TMM]

Really? Xnews downloads just as fast, headers load instantly, articles download instantly, apply a filter and it instantly filters. Newsbin, took 10 minutes to load, added a filter, 10 minutes to reload, clicked to download an article waited 5 minutes for it to appear in the list. How is that better? Xnews...faster and less resource hungry, newsbin....slow and greedy.

all right, I will test your theory . I will run them side by side and make a video posted on YouTube for everybody to see. I think I know which one will win, but I am keeping an open mind

on second thoughts it is just too much. Hassle I are currently running Windows 8 and I don't know how that would affect a video capture program. Secondly, I am not too keen on running a old program by a developer. I have never heard of and who has essentially abandon the freeware

[Quade]

Certainly I believe that's what your experience. That's what the 10 day free trial is supposed to do. Let you try it and decide if you like it or not. You may simply not be in the target audience for Newsbin.

I use XNews too in testing and it uses more ram and downloads slower on a fast connection than Newsbin. If you're on a slow connection, they're going to be the same speed for sure. The connection is the bottleneck. XNews doesn't support header compression either (last time I checked) which means with the right server, Newsbin will download headers 10 time faster than Xnews. I suspected that's the issue but, you didn't respond, that Newsbin downloaded headers so fast, your PC couldn't keep up. If that's the case it's just a matter of waiting till it catches up. I get that you don't want to wait and you just want go give up.

Xnews is a fine reader but, a mediocre binary downloader. Newsbin is the opposite. It accels at bulk downloading. I can't really see you queuing up 40 gigs of downloads in Xnews, yet people do that all the time with Newsbin, downloading at speeds that exceed 200 Mbps.

[TMM]

one more thing I would like to add to this compensation/thread is that whatever you through at as it is will do my feeling is your PC cannot cope with the amount of headers you have selected to download out one try limiting the amount of headers that you download at once

[TMM]

also, are you running nb with administrator privileges. This will enable high-speed file creation mode

[scymitar]

look I don't really care about what shows up faster, do what you must to feel right, I only know what is faster and simpler on my system, and to me mine is the only opinion that counts.

[Quade]

Yeah, I was done with the topic. Clearly no right answers.

[Quade]

Seriously? 40,000 groups. That's kind of funny. I can tell you it was never designed for that. I think you're the first person I've ever heard of who tried that.

I'll be the first one to say, that 40,000 groups is not something I've ever tried. It's probably the root of most of your problems too. I'll bet your NBI file is HUGE. It's read in every time Newsbin starts too. Every time it's looking for a configuration entry it's got to dig through all those groups.

Well, I guess I hear something new every day.

[Hoola]

When did he say he was running 40,000 groups or wishes to run 40,000 groups ?

It's obvious to anybody that read his post that he is just making a point of comparison as to Newsbin not being very good with large lists whether that be groups,headers, download list or trying to loads lots of NZBs as any of us know that try and fight with newsbin daily bases and the groups part was just a good extreme example of how a tiny freeware program wipes the floor with newsbin taking hours to write to a file when Xnews can do it so quick , but the same goes for any other function you care to compare but that example really extenuates the difference.

Trying to focus on one point in his post with a air of ridicule sounds like a desperate man clutching at straws.

[Quade]

When did he say he was running 40,000 groups or wishes to run 40,000 groups ?

The 40,000 group thing IS funny. He added 40,000 groups and then complained that it was slow. It's like telling me I lost a race that I didn't enter. It's slow because it's not something I ever even considered. I mean, if 5 of you said "I need to add 40,000 groups and it's too slow" it's a sign I need to look at the code. How many people have asked for that? 1...maybe?

I don't think some of you "get" how this is supposed to work.

The code's written for what I think is reasonable usage. 200-500 groups in the groups list say. A TB in the download list. A couple decent servers, A decently fast PC with a decently fast hard disk. Then I put it out for people to use. Then people tell me what they're looking for, or problems they're having. This "download out of order" thing for example which hit me out of left field. None of the testers reported it but, enough people complained to make it an issue. Server priority is another thing I'm thinking about. Then I take notes, look at the code and try to make the next version better.

Changes to help people running it on low powered machine. That was totally user driven because, it's not something most people need or care about.

The OP just wanted to vent. He didn't want to try to figure out why he's having problems. I tried to help him, he wasn't responsive.

I'm not looking for some sort of adversarial relationship with the users. They tell me what they want and if enough people chime in and it makes sense, I add it.

[MichaelW_]

Compared to every other usenet app I have run (and there have been a lot before I paid for Newsbin) it runs circles around most all of them. Personally, I follow about 106 groups, including boneless. I can load millions of headers and apply filters with a snap of my fingers. If things are just sitting there on a quad core rig as you said you have there must be something else going on.

[Busty]

You might find it Ridiculous but the only option users have over the groups list is to add them in bulk to keep track of what groups they have visited as it's only after the groups have been added that a user can decide to delete groups of no interest as it's impossible for anybody to keep track of the ticked boxes on the add groups list.

If you added a hide or delete option to the groups.db3 then users would not be forced to add groups in bulk as Rezzers point is not as crazy as you might first think even though 40,000 groups is some what extreme.

[Quade]

See, another thing I didn't think of because I couldn't imagine adding groups in bulk. I don't really have a problem adding a delete or hide function. Basically you're asking for a filter to not show groups you're already subbed to right?

My thought on this is that there's only about 2000-2200 groups with binary content. A solid majority of content on Usenet is in the top 100 or so groups and the rest drops off pretty quickly. I typically sort on post count when I'm looking for groups to add.

[Busty]

a groups value is not based on the header turnover but the subject matter.

If you have a hobby that relates to the picture groups then they often have a slow turnover or if you are a fan of something say for example reality TV then the Big Brother groups are only updated once or twice a year for each country when the program is aired and even the rare game console emulators have slow update and turnover so you can't manage the list on post count alone.

As it stands there is no way of micro-managing the add groups list over a long period of time as it does take a long time to get through the list as often the group name has no meaning of the actual content until you download the headers and take a look , so the only way to manage the list is to keep them added as disabled even if you don't want them as any sort way of knowing where you have been as it's impossible to remember every group name and most groups even the low turnover ones often have a spam group with a similar name so it's a impossible task.

And as you know keeping groups slows down the nbi config file so only having the option to manage the list with disable / delete after they are added is an ass up and back to front logic as you need control of the big add groups list.

[Quade]

a groups value is not based on the header turnover but the subject matter.

If you're on AW or Giganews, there is no header turnover. Retention is growing 1 day for each day that passed. No telling how long that will work.

Here's what I'm guessing you're asking for:

1 - A way to have a complete and a partial listing of a groups in the main groups tab.

2 - You're not really looking to just hide subscribed groups, you're looking to have ALL groups show up in the groups tab whether you subscribed to it or not (this emulating Xnews) with some switch to change the display mode between subbed and unsubbed.

3 - You probably want to do away with the group add window altogether and instead use the group's tab for it.

The NBI file performance thing is just a sideshow then. It's an issue because you're subbing to many thousands of groups but, you don't really WANT to sub to 1000's of groups at a time. You want to see the groups listed in the group tab without subbing to them. You just want to sub to a couple at a time to check then unsub or delete. So, when you compare XNews performance to Newsbin in the group list, it's apples and oranges because you can see the listing in Xnews without subbing to the group.

[gkar]

sounds usefull

[Busty]

Sounds like a good idea and the way forward. =)

[Quade]

Not saying I'm going to do it. It's taken this long just to figure out what you're asking for.

I'm trying to imagine how it would integrate with GOG display and how filters and find are supposed to work.

[Plankton]

A quick fix would be to give the users a right click option in the "add groups" and the added groups section to be able to mark the group with a red X and to have a filter option to hide groups with a red X so users can remember what groups they have visited and unsubed from.

Though this wouldn't fix the slowing down of the NBI file with large group lists.

Just a thought.

[Busty]

Yeah a red X would do it in the "add group" section as a visual indicator of where you have been and unsubbed from as all you have at the moment is a blank box or a tick.

[Busty]

Version 6.41 Beta 1 Build 2101, November 6, 2012
Added the ability to delete groups from the Add Groups Dialog
Added a checkbox to hide subscribed groups in the Add Groups Dialog

yipeee !!!!!!!! , Not tried it yet but it sounds awesome. =)

Enabled the cache interface in the groups list.
Enabled the cache interface for add groups window

Sounds great even though i have no idea what it is. =)

[Quade]

The caching stuff is just a way to improve the display performance.

[Plankton]

search groups pictures delete all , Awesome.

Thanks Quade

[Hoola]

Thankyou Quade.......