Dutch company xsusenet now offer "Lifetime 1Mbit Usenet, Free Usenet access" - http://www.xsusenet.com/

I expect this will be very popular and probably not available for a long time so if you want a free usenet feed you better sign up quick.

Signed up.

Now what do I do with it?

Download grabit and start downloading stuff at maxed out speeds:

http://www.shemes.com/

Thanks for the heads up, Phil.

Time to put my crappy True 9M (ADSL) connection to the test...

I seriously doubt he will max out any speed with a freebie (but it is not clear is this is limited to one connection or not - but suspect it is as the 30 day free offer is only two connections). I would highly advise use of SABnzbd+ for downloading (free and excellent) and use of http://nzbmatrix.com for finding nzb files. Much easier than downloading hundreds of files to get one download.

I seriously doubt he will max out any speed with a freebie (but it is not clear is this is limited to one connection or not - but suspect it is as the 30 day free offer is only two connections). I would highly advise use of SABnzbd+ for downloading (free and excellent) and use of http://nzbmatrix.com for finding nzb files. Much easier than downloading hundreds of files to get one download.

That's what confuses me, it says both 'free lifetime access' and 'valid 30 days'.

so shall I expect a knock on the door from a hitman at 30 days?

After login it's all double Dutch to me?

I have been using nn for Usenet news for the past 20 years and will not change it. Lightning fast.

No news is a good news?

I seriously doubt he will max out any speed with a freebie (but it is not clear is this is limited to one connection or not - but suspect it is as the 30 day free offer is only two connections). I would highly advise use of SABnzbd+ for downloading (free and excellent) and use of http://nzbmatrix.com for finding nzb files. Much easier than downloading hundreds of files to get one download.

What kind of things can be downloaded Lop? Music, movies? I have never heard of a NZB file before.

Thanks

I'm not associated with these guys so I don't know anything other than what you can see yourself by going to their website.

Click the EU flag to get English.

The 30 days demo is something else, it's 10 mbit. Click on the "Free usenet" button on top and you will see: "Special: We are offering 1Mbit accounts for free (never expires)!" This package does not expire but is only 1 mbit.

When I login and click subscriptions I see unlimited:

It's not very encouraging to post a freebie like this just to have people complaining about it. Ok so it's limited to 1 mbit, and maybe more, but hey, it's free. If you want faster feel free to sign up for a subscription. I think they start at around $10/month or so.

What kind of things can be downloaded Lop? Music, movies? I have never heard of a NZB file before.

Just about anything - go to the website to see. The USENET only allows short files so there are many involved in making a full download so the NZB file gets them all together for one download and the SAB program does the downloading and extraction with no involvement required. As you are obtaining from one site that has everything speed should always be high and a good service will have about 3 years storage these days.

I'm not associated with these guys so I don't know anything other than what you can see yourself by going to their website.

Click the EU flag to get English.

I don't know where you get 30 days from. When I login and click subscriptions I see unlimited:

I get 30 days from the website link you provided - they list free and another service for a few euro or pounds and the free says 30 days. But do not believe that is the offer listed above which says forever so suspected that would only be one connection as the listed free service is two connections for 30 days.

I'm not associated with these guys so I don't know anything other than what you can see yourself by going to their website.

Click the EU flag to get English.

I don't know where you get 30 days from. When I login and click subscriptions I see unlimited:

It's not very encouraging to post a freebie like this just to have people complaining about it. Ok so it's limited to 1mbit, and maybe more, but hey, it's free. If you want faster feel free to sign up for a subscription. I think they start at around $10/month or so.

Not complaining, just confused, I don't know anything about usenet and haven't attempted to use it before.

I agree the frontpage is a bit confusing, but if you click on the "Free Usenet" link on top you get a page where it is quite clearly stated: "Special: We are offering 1Mbit accounts for free (never expires)!". Then click on the "Subscribe Now" button to sign up. I did, and my account is per the screenshot I attached.

Would I open a topic with the subject of FREE if it was limited to 30 days? Come one, give me a little credit

I never questioned that. Read my posts. But I questioned how many connections would be allowed when mention of max out speed was made as that normally is a function of several connections and the free service on front page said two. I was not interested in service as have a paid service that I am happy with.

That's excellent! Thanks very much Phil

Thanks Phil, very useful.

Sweet. Nice one Phil.

Any recommendations for a free Windows newsreader?

As I said highly advise using NZB files rather than trying to download individual files and for that SABnzbd+ works great and is free - opens as a tab in any browser. Give it a quick try and am sure you will never want to go back to newsreader downloading.

Surely you don't think I'm going to download dodgy files?

I want to read the goodness that is soc.culture.thai

Hi Phil

i have subscribed and set up altbinz, i have connected ssl trying both ports as shown on the e-mail, unable to connect, are you connected using ssl?

now connected usinp port 119, none ssl

I want to read the goodness that is soc.culture.thai

Really? You do have a death wish. Admit it has been many years but that was so extreme as to be almost useless for any kind of information exchange. I tried a couple of current news readers but not happy with them (but was not trying to use for text). NZB covers all the binaries and they are not all of suspect nature. I just can't go back to newsreaders after using torrents but NZB is just as easy.

Thanks for the heads up phil

You can get 2 day free trials from xennews.com with a new email everytime. No speed limit! 20 connections (I get 1.04 mbyte/sec from 9Mbit tot line)

for nzb, newzbin.com is still ownz all.

I want to read the goodness that is soc.culture.thai

Really? You do have a death wish. Admit it has been many years but that was so extreme as to be almost useless for any kind of information exchange. I tried a couple of current news readers but not happy with them (but was not trying to use for text). NZB covers all the binaries and they are not all of suspect nature. I just can't go back to newsreaders after using torrents but NZB is just as easy.

Not really

It was great when it first started but eventually went the way of most non-moderated newsgroups. I shall investigate this NZB stuff.

Having big problems connecting to this server. I'm running Windows 7 Home and Avast anti virus. I've tried 2 different newsreaders, Grabit and SABnzbd. When I first ried Avast complained that both of them were trying to connect via SSL and it wouldn't let them as it wanted to handle the SSL connection. I disabled Avast's mail/nntp scanning service and tried them again both on ports 119 and 563. Now they just timeout. Anyone else having problems connecting?

Edit: Grabit appeared in the list of NNTP servers that Avast keeps together with other Newsreaders that I've used in the past. Those other readers got through Avast without problems. I've looked at the Grabit support site and they've had problems with Avast before but that was back in 2005!