My New Newsgroup Client: BinBot

I've been using Panic's Unison for the past couple of years for newsgroup access, and while the UI is nice, it has never really compared to anything I've seen on Windows. It's slow and clunky and has always left me wanting.

I've been doing the 30 day eval on BinBot lately, and I'm impressed. While written in Java, it is still infinitely faster (albeit a little less usable) than Unison. It's a little cheaper than Unison ($20 vs $25) and it's well worth the reduction in stress that you get. Another plus, it's cross-platform - BinBot runs on Doze, Linux and Mac.



If Panic does clean up its act with respect to Unison, I could very well switch back, but for now, I'll be buying BinBot. It automatically stitches/unpar/unrars my downloads, and it doesn't grind my Mac to a halt the way that Unison does.

I've never understood the blind gaga love that Mac nuts give Unison (I suspect it's more of a geek crush for anything Panic), but for now, I've finally found a decent alternative.

Tags: newsgroups, nntp, unison, binbot, panic, mac