Stu's Rusty Bucket

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Review Agent 4.0

So I was a faithful WinAgent 1.9 user for donkeys years, recently I upgraded to 4.0 for a really cheap price prior to its release.

Now its out and I’ve used it for a while…

If your thinking of upgrading, dont!!

I think its a newsreader.. usenet and all that… Whats with this Desks and Folders crap?

If i click on my ‘all folders’ title.. I get a nice duplicate list of my subscribed groups and the same list under All Desks… Why doesnt it toggle to my subscribed groups, all groups and new groups??

Someome tell me wtf is a ‘desk’ again?

So how do I ‘get new groups’ added to my news server since last group update… 1.9 had a nice little menu option. Quite simple really..

Now I get some crap tool called ‘Newsgroup Directory’ that allows me to ‘Update directory’ which turns out to mean ‘Get New Groups’.. and there is a nice little check box down the bottom that says ‘show only new groups’..

Because its sooo hard to download files from the web or from ftp, most of then enhancements in the app seem to have gone into viewing + decoding crap yEnc binaries inside the app. Because we all know that a) yEnc isnt broken at all b) usenet is the best known place in the world for downloading + finding binaries..

If your a sad sap that needs to use usenet for binaries, agent 4.0 might be awesome stuff.

If you want to read usenet and such, stick to 1.9, ponying up for the upgrade is not worth it.

The only GOOD thing I’ve found, unlike 1.9, 4.0 remebers your column widths! yeehaw!

You still cant modify any hotkeys, bind keys to actions, etc…

Overall.. dont bother to upgrade.

I didnt even look at the email client in the newsreader since I have never and dont ever expect to use it as my email client, so I cant comment on it.  I have an email client. I just want a newsreader.