Access Usenet direct from your browser, no news client required
Founded in 1995, Easynews is an interesting Usenet service that comes with a very unusual feature. It allows you to search, download and unpack newsgroup files direct from your browser.
This has some benefits. You do not need to find, install and set up a news client, as an example. And you’re in a position to get the service from all of your devices using exactly the exact same interface, making it much easier and more convenient to use.
Although the web interface can not match the clients, it’s smarter than you may think. An Easy Assembler component makes it simple to download multi-part assemblies, for example, mechanically extracting, organizing and decompressing them for you.
- Easynews for US$9.98 per month
This functionality does not come cheap. The $9.98 (#8) a month Classic Plan has a web retention of just 365 days plus a monthly transfer limit of 20GB. That compares poorly with UsenetServer, that gives you unlimited access for a monthly $7.95 (#6.36).
Updating to another program will get you more energy, but still at a steep price. The top-of-the-range Large Gig Plan offers you 150GB of web data transfer and 2,950 days retention through the web interface, unlimited data and 3,364 days retention via NNTP. You get up to 60 relations, a bundled VPN, and various extras including a 12GB’loyalty’ bonus which you will receive each year when you renew your subscription. That is an adequate specification, but we’d expect nothing less for an eye-watering $29.94 (#24) per month.
Easynews isn’t for bargain hunters, then, but the web interface may still be attractive to many. If you’re tempted, the business includes a 14-day 10GB free trial to help you see the way the service operates.
Privacy
Easynews has a very well-presented privacy policy: clear, succinct, yet packed with all the details you want to understand.
The page starts with a summary of its main points, including those:
- We won’t send unsolicited email.
- We will not sell, rent, or exchange your information to any third party.
- We do not maintain HTTP logs.
- We don’t keep NNTP logs.
- Other companies regularly utilize tens of thousands more words while somehow giving you much less information.
The policy goes on to describe what information is gathered when you sign up or browse the website, and how and when the corporation could contact you. These sections are longer, but still obviously written and with none of the legal jargon you’ll see elsewhere.
You can sign up for Easynews here
There’s a recognizable section about’Legal and Law Enforcement Cooperation’, which claims that:”Easynews reserves the right to disclose collected information as required by law… for example in conjunction with a court order.” Like other Usenet providers, if someone’s pursuing you since you have downloaded something dubious, your data may be passed over.
Easynews offers some protection using its SSL support, encrypting your connections to make it more challenging for other people to monitor your own actions.
Purchase a plan with a VPN — or add it for $2.99 (#2.40) per month — and you’re going to get an extra layer of anonymity, with the ability to select a new digital location from any of 21 countries around the world.
Performance
Easynews’ pricing strategy is a little complicated, but the signup screen does its very best to explain exactly what you’re getting, listing all of the core features and providing you options to expand the plans with add-ons. If the baseline 365 times of web retention is not sufficient, for instance, you can extend it to 2,951 times for only $2.99 (#2.40) a month.
We opted for the do-everything Big Gig program, handing over our email address and payment details (only PayPal and cards are verified ). There were no complications or surprises, the process was completed within minutes, and a couple of seconds after a helpful welcome email came with installation info and support links.
We started by logging into the Easynews web interface. This started with a very simple search box which enabled us to search for videos, sound, pictures or record files by keyword.
We ran a movie search and got a list of matches, complete with thumbnails where available. You don’t need to worry about multi-part binaries as the program handles them automatically. All you see are the individual video files along with their crucial details: post date, resolution, size, run time, etc.
A turbocharged’Advanced Search’ box gives you vastly more control. You may search by subject, newsgroup, poster, file name, extension, even video and audio codec. Results could be processed to remove duplicates or other unwanted files, then piled in numerous ways.
However you hunt, downloading may be as easy as clicking the document title. There is nothing else to pick, not even a’Save As’ dialog — your browser just starts the download as normal.
There’s an unusual additional in the form of the Zip Manager. This allows you to send multiple files to a queue, and then have them compressed into a single archive when you’re done. It’s not likely to be helpful to everyone, but may be helpful if you’re searching for multiple tiny files on a single topic and want to keep them all together.
Overall it is an impressive interface, and really it is better than some native information clients. If you’re interested in this web-based approach, have a look at a simple presentation of the search page .
It’s possible to set up and access Easynews via standard news customers, also. We configured Usenet Wire and Grabit and both performed well, attaining 40Mbps download rates with just five connections. With 60 available, that leaves plenty of space to max out most internet connections.
Finally, we tried to set the Easynews VPN up. As the installer failed, this was to be hard. The motive wasn’t clear so we’re not counting this as a major Easynews issue. As the support team reacted within minutes to our request if anything, it revealed a positive side to this firm.
Once set up, we realized the client as essentially the same program utilized by Newshosting, no great surprise as equally Easynews and Newshosting are possessed by UNS Holdings.
It looked easy to use, although the client is short on features and looks ugly. A list of locations is sortable by country, city, host or reaction times; you can choose your preferred protocol (OpenVPN UDP or TCP, L2TP or PPTP) from the exact same screen, then connect in a few clicks.
We had no complaints about its peak performance, while the customer has its issues. Our UK server managed 35Mbps and much more, and switching to Denmark and Netherlands nevertheless gave us more than 30Mbps. US relations were comparatively unsatisfactory during testing, peaking at 15Mbps, and Asian locations fought to achieve 5Mbps. If you’re more interested in obtaining a new IP than where it’s situated, Easynews should deliver all of the power you want.
Closing verdict
Easynews really does live up to its name, using an easy yet powerful interface that works on all your devices. It could be an perfect support for newsgroup novices with downloading demands that are mild, but go beyond retention that is 365-day or the 20GB monthly allowance and it might get pricey.
