Astraweb usenet provider $96/year

lowteckh said:
What I don't get is, where are the supposed files stored? A big black hole somewhere?
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From Wikipedia:
How newsgroups work

Newsgroup servers are hosted by various organizations and institutions. Most Internet service providers host their own news servers, or rent access to one, for their subscribers. There are also a number of companies who sell access to premium news servers.

Every host of a news server maintains agreements with other news servers to regularly synchronize. In this way news servers form a network. When a user posts to one news server, the message is stored locally. That server then shares the message with the servers that are connected to it if both carry the newsgroup, and from those servers to servers that they are connected to, and so on. For newsgroups that are not widely carried, sometimes a carrier group is used for crossposting to aid distribution. This is typically only useful for groups that have been removed or newer alt.* groups. Crossposts between hierarchies, outside of the Big 8 and alt.* hierarchies, are failure prone.

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people use newsgroups when Speed and Quality matter. Many BT users are happy to get a divx or xvid movie, most usenet people settle for nothing less than pure dvd rips, if not HD content lie Blu Ray rips.
 
I've been on the $11/month deal for about 6 months now, didn't think i'd ever find a better deal, but here it is, thanks for this link, save myself about $35 a year

To those wondering about astraweb's service record, its fantastic (and i've used several usenet service providers in the past), only once was I unable to connect, and I was reimbursed the month's charge (for 4 days of downtime !!), I think it was when they were upgrading their servers, so I can't fault them for .. making things better.

On that note, they significantly increased their retention time, I think its up to 315 days or so, which I believe is significantly longer then giganews (whose fees are unacceptably high to me).

Also to those of you talking about PAYING for indexing services, well I don't know as i'd never pay for them, I use newzleech.com and it has served me very well over the years, very good search engine with good advanced search criteria and sortable results, i've never seen the need to use any other NZB service.

While i'm rambling, of the many newsgroup apps i've used newsleecher has by far been my favourite, so much so I actually bought it (lol). I'm sure there will be some of you who'd want to argue with me this or that is better, but i'm not here to argue, just pass along my own personal experiences, hopefully any of you just getting into the newsgroup scene may find this info helpful.

Thanks again for the link to the deal !
 
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I'm on usenetserver right now, not too happy with the retention. I might switch to this when it expires.
 
i dont have an account...how do I START with the 96/yr plan? You have to sign up to even email support
 
http://www.news.astraweb.com/specials/voucher.cgi?t=zgufplhxfr2cwsw

NO, that is not a referral link so please don't pounce me for that stuff - Astraweb doesn't do referrals. It appears to be valid as long as you use that voucher link - and again, it's not a referral link. I did a search and found the link on over 20 forums and every time I located it someone else was posting it so, I honestly and truly do not believe it's a referral of any kind.

I've been using their $11/month plan for 2 years now, never needed anything else, works fine for me.
 
I switched from using torrents to astraweb about 6 months ago and I will never go back. Their service is fantastic. I max out my 40 Mbps fios connection on every download. $8 a month is the same as a Netflix subscription and astraweb is better.

If you are tired of dealing with torrents, this is a great time to make the jump. There's a post somewhere around here that explains what you need to do, the software to use, etc.
 
Retention has grown from 20-30 days a few years ago to almost three years today. It's rare to find a torrent that old and still get decent speed from it.
 
leagle said:
If you are tired of dealing with torrents, this is a great time to make the jump. There's a post somewhere around here that explains what you need to do, the software to use, etc.
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Pretty sure that thread is in the genmay subforum, and probably where it belongs ;)
 
Astraweb is awesome, $96 a year really is nothing for the content you could have. Lots faster than torrents.
 
eon said:
eh...$96 a year? Ill stick with torrents
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I felt that way too until I tried it seven years ago. Wouldn't do without it now.

And for the occasional thing that requires a torrent, it's not like torrents go away.
 
Ah decisions decisions. My usenetserver sub ($95.40/yr) doesn't renew until Jan. 2012, but it sounds like Astraweb is the superior option. Hate to pass on a chance to change services without a significant change in cost, but also don't like doubling up costs for the next ~4mo. Is Astraweb enough better to justify it?
 
I went from Torrents to astraweb, and I never looked back.

Also like the fact that they have SSL servers
 
One thing to remember, with torrents, you become a distributor because you share what you download, thats how torrents work. With Usenet you dont share, you dont upload. You just download most of the time at your max capacity (I have had Comcast 12Mbit & 22Mbit packages, both were maxed easily everytime I used my Astraweb account).

I use to use IRC, then went Usenet once packetnews died. I have never looked back. I have used Astraweb for a good 6-7 years. Awesome service.

If you look at any P2P case ever brought against someone, it was because they shared what they downloaded. They want the distributors, not downloaders. With torrents a lot of the time you have no choice but to share. With Usenet it doesn't apply.
 
Anyone have any tips for first time user? I decided to join, but now I am over whelmed and almost want to cancel this.

It just seems difficult to find what I need. Specifically new content and the ridiculous long file names and descriptions make it hard to find anything.

Or perhaps you've accumulated a good list of groups I should add to my list. It just seems like I am downloading gigs of headers and not finding squat.
 
Old thread is old, but:

I've used Giganews, Newshosting, Newsgroupdirect, and Astraweb.

Giganews was great, but too expensive. Newsgroupdirect decided to throttle my speeds because I was apparently using their service too much. I had connection issues with Astraweb and couldn't use it half of the time. I realize tons of people use AW and never have problems, but myself and others do/did.

That leaves Newshosting, and it's been perfect for me. It is $100 a year - $4 more than Astraweb. I gladly spend the extra penny per day to avoid Astraweb's problems, and I'd recommend others do as well.
 
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PiERiT said:
I don't gain anything by someone signing up through that; just trying to help people out.

I'll change it though since it's frowned upon.
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any chance you can repost the link since you're obviously not the affiliate?

Can't seem to find a link to the $100 yearly deal, maybe my google fu is off today.

Edit: Nevermind, found the $100 yearly Newshosting deal here: http://usenetreviews.org/newshosting-review/

I have the Astraweb $96 deal but thank you for the heads up Pierit, can't hurt to research alternatives and check out people's opinions :)
 
SJetski71 said:
any chance you can repost the link since you're obviously not the affiliate?

Can't seem to find a link to the $100 yearly deal, maybe my google fu is off today.

I have the $96 astraweb deal already but i wouldn't mind considering/researching someone else's service.
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Edit: Oops, posted before your edit. That's the one.
 
wiseoracle said:
Anyone have any tips for first time user? I decided to join, but now I am over whelmed and almost want to cancel this.

It just seems difficult to find what I need. Specifically new content and the ridiculous long file names and descriptions make it hard to find anything.

Or perhaps you've accumulated a good list of groups I should add to my list. It just seems like I am downloading gigs of headers and not finding squat.
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use sabnzbd and get nzb files from somewhere.
 
I've had Newshosting and they were perfect while I had them, then moved on to Giganews and Astraweb.

Can't say that any have given me any serious problems. Except maybe Giganews' exorbitant prices! I pay less than 1/3rd now on Astraweb.
 
fattypants said:
I've had Newshosting and they were perfect while I had them, then moved on to Giganews and Astraweb.

Can't say that any have given me any serious problems. Except maybe Giganews' exorbitant prices! I pay less than 1/3rd now on Astraweb.
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Why did you switch off Newshosting? Was considering them too.
 
Lupine said:
Why did you switch off Newshosting? Was considering them too.
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I can't speak for him, but probably the price. Their usual price is $15 a month. I stopped using them when I found that NGD and AW were cheaper, but went back after finding the $100/yr deal.
 
Lupine said:
Why did you switch off Newshosting? Was considering them too.
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Because Giganews had an amazing 50 days of retention and newshosting only had 24 lol

It's a moot point these days. All the top providers are at about 1200 days.
 
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