Well, since we've started talking about servers...

[Kaos]

Well, I've noticed that telus has sucked lately, so I'm thinking of looking at another news server...anyone with any experience or blanks to fill in, please reply! (Speeds and whatnot are for Calgary area)

I'm going to try to use the best price for unlimited downloads, as personally, I'm using a broadband connection.

(SC's are Simultaneous Connections)



ISPs:
Telus - Retention: 1 Day maybe less, Propogation: Ugly, DLSpeed: 1.20 Mbps, SCs: 3, Price: Free
Shaw - Retention: Avg 1 Day, Prop: Decent?, DLSpeed: 2 Mbps, SCs: 5, Price: $20 CAD/month more than Telus

News Servers:
Airnews - "Extra Edition" - Retention: ?, Prop: ?, DLSpeed: 230kbit/sec, SCs: 3, Price: $14.06 US/Month for 6 months
Airnews - "Bronze" - Retention: ?, Prop: ?, DLSpeed: 320kbit/sec, SCs: 3, Price: $23.46 US/Month for 6 months
Agent - Retention: Advertise 5 Days, Prop: ?, DLSpeed: "Unlimited", so max out your connection, SCs: 6, Price: $14.50 US/month
Easynews - Retention: ?, Prop: ?, DLSpeed: ?, SCs: ?, Price: $9.98 US per month or per 6 Gigs
Randori News - Retention: Advertise 3 Days, Prop: ?, DLSpeed: "Unlimited", SCs: ?, Price: $11.65/Month for 3 months


And, thats about all I feel like checking right now, it's 3am and I'm going to bed. Any other ideas? That Randori is looking kind of good because of cheaper price than Agent. Agent looks the best after that though.

---
Kaos, the mass confusion...

[zanson]

This is what I use:
usenetserver.com - unlimited, ~5day retention, 6 connections, 1.5Mbps speed cap, 15/mo or 40/3mo

forteinc.com's new services looks pretty good too. I've been thinking about switching over to them, though I'm waiting to see if they die under the load once more people start using their service.

[(inc)]

Been using Easynews for years with few problems; mainly just to suppliment my local RR server. Besides the usual retention/completion factors, an interesting plus for us here is that more people in aba/abma use it for posting binaries then any other premium, at least the last time I surveyed.

Things have been so stable that I dropped my ancient Newscene account -- what with RR, EN and Bittorrent, I found I was going months without even downloading headers from it.

(inc)

[Kaos]

[Melchior]

Shaw for me (Vancouver) has about 3 days retention, and completion has been quite good for a while now-- it's very rare that I find myself hitting up my Easynews account for incompletes.

[Onakra]

For some that may be interested; Newshosting has started offering unlimited accounts for $14.95 a month. Reported retention is 18 days and you can use 4 connections. Currently there isn't a speedlimit in place (yet?) and speeds up to 4Mbp/s have been reported. I'll be switching in a few days from my regular Newshosting account to check it out.

[LaughnCynic]

I've been a very happy Easynews user for quite some time.

Easynews - Retention: (just checked web interface quickly and it is showing 21 days for ABMA) nntp interface is usually 2 weeks or so, Prop: Excellant, DLSpeed: Hard for me to speak to this anymore as I'm stuck on ISDN but when I had RR I usually got upwards of 1.2Mbps, SC's: At least 4 AFAIK but it's been a long time since a used a tool other than Xnews for dl'n, Price: $10/6GB/Month (changing see below)

Just thought I'd mention that Easynews announced it is going from $10/6GB/month to $10/10GB/month starting June 1st (for old and new accounts) so value wise they're getting even better.

http://easynews.com/report/051704.html

[xo]

Hey, neat-o about Easynews. Seems like they're responding to a lot of competition rising lately. I wonder if they are going to continue running their surveys- 'twas an easy boost to the month allocation.

Am I the only one that always picks the Easynews mirror when downloading from sourceforge? I figure I can count on them for speed .

-xo

[LaughnCynic]

[(inc)]

Hehe... it felt weird checking my EN account and, with about 1 week to go in the current *period*, seeing I still had ~7G available.... ^_^

(inc)