Windows 8 Compatible Usenet Clients

Microsoft officially released Windows 8 to the masses on October 26th.  Since then we’ve received inquiries as to which Usenet clients are compatible with the new operating system.  To answer the question we upgraded a Windows 7 box to Windows 8 and tested some of our favorite newsreaders.  Let’s take a look at a few newsgroup readers that passed the test.  Along with the version numbers that support windows 8.

We’ll try some more clients soon but for now we tested the Newshosting client, Newsbin Pro and NewsLeecher.

Newshosting Usenet Client

We tested the Newshosting client first since they pushed an update in July that was compatible with the dev release of Windows 8 as well as Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.  We still wanted to make sure the software could handle the final Windows release and it did.  Members can download version 1.3.2 of the client directly from the Newshosting site.  Those new to the service can enjoy unlimited Usenet for just $9.99 a month or $99 a year.

Newsbin Pro

We had a friend running Newsbin Pro on an earlier release of Windows so we didn’t expect any issues nor did we have any.  We ran the latest version of the client which is Newsbin 6.40.  It was just released at the beginning of October and worked just fine in our testing under Windows 8.  Those who have a license can download version 6.40 free from the Newsbin site.  Others can visit their site to download a 10 day free trial.

NewsLeecher

Next up on our list of newsreaders to test was NewsLeecher.  We fired up the latest beta release which is NL version 5.0 beta 15.  Everything seemed to work just fine under Windows 8 including the SuperSearch feature.  With that said we understand there’s an install issue with the NewsLeecher version 4.0 final release.  So if you plan to run NL under Windows 8 then you’ll want to do so with the v 5.0 beta 15 release.

We look forward to also testing SABnzbd, Binreader and GrabIt with windows 8 in the near future.

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Newshosting Client for Mac Mountain Lion

Newshosting recently rolled out a new version of their popular newsreader.  Newshosting client 1.3.2 release includes support for Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.  Along with the latest developer release of Windows 8.  This is great news for those getting ready to upgrade to Mountain Lion.  As there aren’t too many Usenet clients that support Mac.  Even less that do it well.  Enjoy unlimited Usenet access for just $9.99 a month or $99 a year.

Support for Mac OS X Mountain Lion and windows 8 were just a couple of the new features and improvements in the Newshosting Browser 1.3.2 update.  Here’s a full list directly from the release notes:

New Features:

  • Supports the upcoming Windows 8 and Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion* (Based on the current developer releases)
  • Windows: Before installation the installer checks if there’s an updated version online and if so installs the updated version instead of the older one.

Improvements:

  • All 3rd party libraries like SSL, UnRAR etc. have been updated to the latest version.
  • Improved support for Mac OS X 10.7
  • Timeout-behavior has been optimized.

Bug fixes:

  • Password protected archives are no longer deleted upon unsuccessful file extraction.
  • Mac OS: The tray icon has been removed. This solves display issues on non-standard Mac OS X desktops.
  • Queue priority editing has been fixed.

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