Newsman Pro

Review by Michael E. Callahan aka Dr. File Finder

NewsMan Pro, by NewsMan Pro, is a full-feature newsgroup reader. I really like it's clean and easy-to-use interface. You can even customize the way it looks using its built-in themes. For anyone that uses a server that imposes limits on the amount you can download this is a program you need to look at. You can set it up so it will automatically stop the download when your limit is reached - pretty cool. Oh, and did I mention that it will also restart when you're able to get more? The program also has a very nice scheduler in the full or non-freeware version. That allows you to have NewsMan Pro go get your news for you, while you sleep perhaps.

NewsMan Pro has a number of neat features that I haven't seen in similar programs. It's Automation Rules function is cool because it will find articles you might be interested in by using keywords or key phrases that you define. When the program goes off to check news headers it watches your rules and snags anything that might be of interest. A nice feature to have. I found that I could gradually refine my rules based on what NewsMan Pro brought back.

NewsMan Pro can deal with both binary and text newsgroups. The program comes with a built-in database that allows you to store messages for as long as you like. I think thats a great feature and it also makes it easy to find things. Another cool feature is the way the program handles binary attachments. Supporting UUE, MIME, and Yenc encoding, the program decodes attachments as you download them, saving them in a folder you've assigned. Another nice feature is the ability to support multiple news servers, which some similar products don't allow. On top of that you can even assign a priority to each newsgroup server. All servers with a priority go into a pool and are treated as one server. A nice option.

Another nice feature included in NewsMan Pro is support for the relatively new NZB (NewsBin) files. This should save you time and effort when dealing with these types of files. Also, if you use a server where news items expire you'll like the fact that NewsMan Pro has a queue that takes article expiration into account helping you to miss fewer articles. The program also has powerful filter capabilities that let you deal with messages the way want. And the program doesn't hog system resources, so you can download your articles/messages while you're doing other things. Lastly, the program has support for MySQL, Firebird and Advantage Database servers. The program comes with Advantage built-in. Very nicely done. So, if you'd like a powerful, yet easy-to-use program for dealing with newsgroups, this may be just what you're looking for. Give it a try and see what I mean. Excellent!

(Reviews provided by Tucows)