News Rover released Version 16 of their popular Usenet newsreader yesterday. Noting performance as the focus for the update.  According to release notes the new version eliminates the need for temp files while downloading which helps to reduce total disk I/O by 75%.  Thus improving download performance and reducing the resources used by the Usenet client.

Customers who paid for a subscription within the last year can download the new version free.  Otherwise the price is $24.95 for previous customers or $29.95 for those new to News Rover.  The subscription fee also covers a year of Usenet search.

Read our News Rover review or visit their Newsrover.com to learn more.

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Here is a list of enhancements from the version 16 release notes:

======== Version 16.0, Rev. 0: 7 Sep 2010 ========

The focus of improvements in version 16 is for performance — especially when downloading large files through broadband connections. We have done extensive testing and benchmarking using a 50 MB/sec DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem, and the results of the improvement are dramatic.We have added a sophisticated, multi-threading caching system that eliminates the need for temp files when downloading and decoding messages. This reduces the total disk I/O by 75% (not counting RAR decompression). This reduction in disk I/O increases the download speed and reduces the impact of News Rover on your system.In addition to the caching system, we added a final output stage that can buffer up to 32MB of data and write the blocks to the disk asynchronously. So if the disk is busy, News Rover can continue to download and decode and then burst the data out when the disk can accept it. We have added a pop-up image preview screen to display thumbnail pictures of JPG images as they are downloaded. To open the screen, click the icon near the middle of the toolbar that looks like a screen with a small window in it. You can move and resize the display window. Whenever a JPG image is downloaded it will be displayed in the preview window. The preview window works with any method of downloading images — subscribed newsgroups, Autoscan, or Usenet search, but it is particularly useful when you are using an Autoscan group to scan and download pictures from an image newsgroup.There are two options on the Configure/General page related to the preview screen: (1) you can specify the minimum amount of time that an image will be displayed before it is replaced by the next one, and (2) you can detach the preview window from News Rover. If you detach the preview window, then it can be displayed while News Rover is minimized. The output of RAR and NZB files are now put in private subfolders to avoid file name conflicts. We have added a field to the main-screen status bar to display the current download speed. This allows you to easily monitor the network speed without having to open any other windows. Options have been added to the newsgroup subscription screen to sort the list of newsgroups either by name or by number of messages in the groups. Options have been added to the global Usenet search screen to sort the search hits by date, subject, or size. When a sender is blocked by right clicking and selecting “Sender…/Block messages from sender”, all messages posted by the sender in the current group are deleted, and a background task is started that deletes all messages posted by the sender in other groups. A new right-click option has been added to the message list. You can right click on a message entry and select “Sender…/Delete current messages from sender” to delete all messages posted by the sender in the current newsgroup without blocking the sender. Improved the way unique file names are created by appending “-nn” in the case where file names have more than one period. Fixed a bug involving the NEAR and BEFORE operators in search filters.