Usenet How To Guide
Usenet is considered to be the most "private" way to share files. In other words, no MPAA or RIAA watching your back. It is fast, has a lot of content, and it's getting more popular, even though the technology is almost 30 years old. Time for an introduction.
Sounds great, but let me start off with the downside to Usenet. The biggest disadvantage is that high speed Usenet servers are not free but your ISP may offer a free newsgroup service so check with there website, but they are never as good as a paid service but its a good way to try Usenet for free. For some people paying for a good service is not a problem, their argument often is that they already pay a lot of money for high speed broadband access, so why not pay a little extra to get the best speeds out of it.
Slyck.com did a pretty good Usenet vs. BitTorrent comparison earlier this year that sums up the pros and cons of both filesharing methods. Usenet might look very complicated to the less p2p-savvy, but it's a piece of cake with this tutorial.
Heres a step-by-step guide to allow one click usenet downloads, but you may want to have a look [HERE] first to get a better understanding how usenet works. I will show you how to setup the Alt.binz Newsreader as this program has more features then other newsreaders and IMHO probably the best newsreader, as it has integrated NZB search and in-program archive check/unrar.
1) Download Alt.Binz here
2) Double click the downloaded file and proceed to install.
3) Before clicking Finish' make sureRun Alt.Binz...' is selected. If you missed this look for the Alt.Binz icon on the desktop and double click it.
4) Once launched click the setup button.
5) Click the folder right of the box containing the download directory. Here you can select the location for downloads.
6) Select `NZB' from the left hand menu.
7) Select 1st circled checkbox, deselect 2nd circled checkbox
8) Select `Servers' from left hand menu
9) Here you enter your news server details. Enter the following:
- Name: Can be anything.
- Address: Usually starts with news.
- Number of connections: Try > 1. More connections can increase speed.
- Port: Default port is 119. Try port 80 if your server allows it.
If you have a premium server (highly recommended, eg newshosting, usenetserver if your ISP doesn't offer a free service) select circled check box, enter username and password.
Lastly click `Add as primary' button.
10) Select `Unrar' from left hand menu
11) Select 1st circled checkbox and 2nd circled checkboxs
12) Select `Miscellaneous' from left hand menu
13) Select circled checkbox.
14) Close the program. You can search for the files yourself but its much easier to get an NZB, which will direct your client to the files and download them. You can get them at FST, newzleech, yabse, or subscribe at an indexing site like NewzBin, or a free indexing site like NZB Matrix and Merlins Portal, or make your own at any of the file indexing sites. The site BinSearch is very popular and good.
Congrats, you're download
Once you get used to downloading from Usenet you may also want to check out this very cool free program called NZBPlayer, its a video player that downloads videos from Usenet and starts playing them in less than a minute, so now you can start watching a film or TV show before it has even finished downloading.
