Well, during my last re-install I took the opportunity to go ahead and switch from Feeddemon to RSS Bandit. While Nick dodged the latest bullet headed for his software its only a matter of time before my initial concerns become a reality. I would rather switch now then wait for the impending disappointment. I have heard great stuff about RSS Bandit so I figured I would give it a shot.
So far I am mostly impressed, the import went flawlessly and it has a ton of cool features. I only have a couple problems so far:
- I get some strange setup error sometimes when I launch the tool, something about not being able to read from the resource file. Not sure where this comes from.
- It seems to update rather sporadically, I can’t seem to force an entire folder to update… or I just haven’t figured out how yet.
I would also love to be able to configure more network connections for feed updating, I have a ton of them and wouldn’t mind RSS Bandit updating 5 of them at a time.
Other than these small issues I am pretty impressed with RSS Bandit, especially when comparing it to commercial products like Feeddemon.
-James
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Yeah, I currently use RSSBandit. It and SauceReader are probably the top two. SauceReader in version 2.10 has an annoying bug where the link to a post is the RSS link instead of the permalink, and that has caused me to come back to RSSBandit for the time being.
James, look in the App.config file (by default C:\Program Files\RssBandit\RSSBandit.exe.config). You’ll see the following setting <add key="MaxDownloadThreads" value="4" />. You can increase that and restart the app.
James, did you register FeedDemon?
If you did, I can’t understand the decision to switch at this stage. You’ve been given free access to Newsgator, so why not try out the extra services, the sweet new beta of FD, and then make a decision?
Dan,
I paid for feeddemon the first week it came out. I have been using it for almost three years. I love feeddemon, I think its a great application… but I think its headed in the wrong direction and I would rather change sooner than later.
I’ve starting reading blogs recently, and yours has been on my list. I am not one to comment much, but figured I can lend from my experience a little.
I’ve tried several different news readers/aggregators and have come across issues with most in one way or another. My biggest issue with RSS Bandit I always had was the huge memory and cpu usage it always used. I know that I have a more than a few rss’ that it was grabbing, but it became a serious perfomance issue with trying to get anything done while the program was running. Someone then told me about Bloglines.com, which does the same thing based completely online, and I’ve been using it since. It has some nice features, like importing your rss list in OPML and other formats, so it was an easy transition. The best part is that I don’t have to keep multiple machines (work, home, laptop, kiosk on the road) installed with software updated with the blogs I’ve read because it’s completely stored on the web.
Anyway, hope that might offer you some help if you are still considering a different product.
-Ed
I considered bloglines, and I think if it had a couple extra features I would be all over it. I have actually been thinking about writing my own online aggregator, but have not decided wether to make the jump or not. I have not been able to find a place to import my OPML in bloglines though, where do you see that feature? To me the most annoying thing about bloglines is how it marks everything as read when you click on the link…. I like to pick and choose between posts.
Oh, and RSSBandit seems to be working great performance wise. It takes about 14k memory while in the taskbar which is about the same as MSN Messenger. It definitly cranks on the proc and memory when updating, but that is to be expected. (especially since I upped the connection limit)
-James
When you are logged into Bloglines, click Edit, then scroll all the way down on the left frame, there’s an Import Subscriptions link there.
As far as performance, I can’t comment on any new versions since I stopped using full out desktop clients as my aggregators. But if you are planning on viewing them in multiple locations, nothing beats some sort of online access, and I know, I know, newsgator and the like have features like that now with uploading a list of read threads to a ftp site, etc.
Why not try Bloglines.Bloglines is much better than newsgator. You can synchronize bloglines with blogbot for outlook. Folder hierarchy is synchronized between Outlook and Online via blogbot. It’s much better than newsgator between outlook and online.
If you like desktop news client, You can use Greatnews to synchronize bloglines like newsgator using feeddemon. Good news is Greatnews is a wonderful free software but feeddemon isn’t.Folder hierarchy is synchronized between Bloglines and Greatnews. Feeddemon doesn’t synchronize Folder hierarchy between newsgator online and itself. Greatnews can be found at :http://www.curiostudio.com/
If you like newsgator for outlook, don’t worry, blogbot does the same and better job for outlook. blogbot can be found at http://www.blogbot.com/out/.
Even you uses several computer, you won’t read the same news twice. cause it’s synchronized online, at outlook via blogbot, at desktop by greatnews.
Bloglines doesn’t offer a desktop service? That’s not true, check out Greatnews!
newsgator is about to attract you to put money out to their pocket. But bloglines platform strongly supported by blogbot in outlook and gratnews in desktop client is about freedom of goodness of sharing.
GreatNews is a free beta RSS reader that is light and small yet still very full featured. Take a look at this feature list:
* Support all major feed formats, including RSS 0.9x, 1.0(rdf), 2.0, Atom 0.30. Support popular extensionslike dublin core, content:encoding etc.
* Integrated internet browser, with popup blocking. Working closely with default browser like Firefox.
* With Import/Export wizard, you can import/export all channel subscriptions in a single step.
* Export rss articles to rss 2.0 format. You can also customize the export by selecting channel/group/label, and/or applying filters.
* Bloglines.com integration
Read everywhere at Bloglines.com, but read twice as fast at your desk.
* Full text search with keyword highlights.
* 100% Unicode support. Displays international languages on the same page. Use any languages anywhere in GreatNews, including Search, Label and News watch.
* "Channel Organizer" helps organize channel subscriptions in one place. Use "Find Channel" to locate your subscriptions quickly.
*you can use ’search channel’ to keep eyes on special subject like ‘Ipod’, Like using feeddemon’s search channel and newsgator’s smart feeds. The difference is that smart feeds isn’t free but greatnews is.
* you can use greatnews even on a usb drive, cause it’s so small, roughly 800kb or so. So you can use it home and at work via usb drive too keep synchronized all the time.
* it’s performance wise to take a little cpu and memory usage.
GreatNews looks really sweet and it’s free?
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