I’ve been accessing Usenet since I have internet access in 1992. Lots of people nowadays equal the internet with the web but there are much more than that. Usenet is such a diverse and rich medium in which to get information that a lot of the time it is the only source.
Since I’ve switched to Mac I’ve been using the free newsgroup reader Halime. Sadly its developer has stopped work on it since November 2003. It has a very strong user interface and preview features that I love. However, since this weekend it has been behaving strangely with lots of beachball period.
I finally gave in this evening and downloaded a copy of Union from Panic. It has a different user interface philosophy but I got used to it very quickly. The one feature that I found really useful but not available in Halime is the ability to filter out messages without attachments. This is very useful for browsing binary newsgroups.
I think Union is very close to my ideal newsgroup reader. The only annoyance I have with it is the rather large icon/view of newsgroups’ groups (i.e. grouping of newsgroups). I prefer minimalistic UI and this is not one of them.
$24.95 is a slightly above what I would fork out without consideration so I think I will take the full advantage of the trial period and decide at the end.
[composed and posted with ecto 2]
Lost in Colonisation 
I’ve been using MT News Watcher since it came out and before it was multi-threaded. The interface isn’t quite up to MacOS X standards but it’s still has the most options.
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