23 Responses

1. Dan Bowling

   January 30th, 2005 at 1:57 pm

   1

   I use FeedDemon, it is amazing. I notice it updates pretty quick (after you change the settings to allow it to update more blogs at once.) It even has the option to make firefox an internal browser within the program (or externally)

2. John

   January 30th, 2005 at 2:06 pm

   2

   I looked at FeedDemon although I haven’t used yet. I didn’t see that FeedDemon had any different features than a lot of the free readers. I’ll try the trial version and see.

3. Aguafuertes

   January 30th, 2005 at 2:08 pm

   3

   RSSOwl is my reader of choice. Reached 1.0 status just recently and was Sourceforge project of the month. Never had any performance problems, but then I might not have as many feeds as you do. There is a “Blog News” feature (which I have never used), so give it a try.

   Good thing is that the developer is very fast and always open for new feature proposals.

4. Brandon

   January 30th, 2005 at 2:13 pm

   4

   I only have about 100-150 feeds, so I don’t know if it’ll work for you, but I use Feed On Feeds. It’s a centralized web-based reader, so you can get to it from many computers and not worry about re-reading articles, and such.

   http://sourceforge.net/projects/feedonfeeds/

5. John

   January 30th, 2005 at 2:24 pm

   5

   Thanks Aguafuertes. I am downloading RSSOwl now. The interface looks nice.

   Brandon, I’m going to try to stay away from web based aggregators. I have a fast connection to the Internet but Firefox seems slow to handle pages with lots of data on it.

6. Adam

   January 30th, 2005 at 3:13 pm

   6

   I have echo the comments of the previous poster who suggested FeedDemon - It really is great software. It now features podcast support, it features an extensible newpaper viewing format, and it it fast. The author is responsive and the software has an active user community. Use the demo for 30 days and see what you think.

   -adam

7. Paul2

   January 30th, 2005 at 3:48 pm

   7

   I use sharpreader, and haven’t found any problems with it. I haven’t tried RSSOwl or FeedDemon though, so I dunno how they stack up…

8. Tris Hussey

   January 30th, 2005 at 3:56 pm

   8

   I have two suggestions. Sage, the extension for Firefox, which I used for a long time. And Lektora from Lektora.com. Although it works within the browser it isn’t web-based and, I found out recently, does great offline too (everything is cached in GZIP files). I’ve written a couple reviews of it on my site recently.

9. Marc

   January 30th, 2005 at 4:04 pm

   9

   After using Sharpreader for at least a year, I recently switched to bloglines. The only drawback on bloglines for me, of any note, is that it only checks URLs once an hour. I switched because I got tired of syncing in my mind what I’d read on a feed reader at work and what I’d read at home. Anyhow, give sharpreader a try.

10. Robert

    January 30th, 2005 at 4:43 pm

    10

    at first i used the feedreader but now i´m using thunderbird and it´s a good alternative.

11. Dave M.

    January 30th, 2005 at 4:44 pm

    11

    Do any of the mentioned desktop readers have a way of storing the read messages centrally so that if you read from the office, you won’t be re-reading the same entries when you get home?

    That would be ideal.

12. Kevin Haryett

    January 30th, 2005 at 4:50 pm

    12

    I use RSS Bandit. It works well and has a lot of choices on updating your feeds.

13. André

    January 30th, 2005 at 4:59 pm

    13

    I can recommend SharpReader and RSS Bandit.

14. Teja

    January 30th, 2005 at 5:50 pm

    14

    Thanks for notifying me of RSSOwl Aguafuertes,

    When I’m on Linux, I use Liferea but I wanted something else and I’ve tried one other, but I wasn’t at all happy with it.

    So I will give a try with RSSOwl (first on windows then on linux)

    I currently use FeedDemon on Windows btw and with around 50 feeds (yes not many at all!) I’m happy with it, and of course on linux I’m with Liferea.

    I was also going to give Akregator (Linux only) a try but I will try Owl first

15. Tris Hussey

    January 30th, 2005 at 6:18 pm

    15

    On the question about about syncing. The only one I know of is NewsGator for Outlook. It let’s you sync with the online version, and I think between machines.

    I also have to comment on system resources. I only have 380 feeds I check, not 1000, but even still aggregators that automatically download can really sap system and bandwidth resources. That’s one reason I like Lektora and Sage. You have to proactively tell them to check.

16. Eric Rines

    January 30th, 2005 at 9:24 pm

    16

    I use Feeddemon as well and love it. I’m an extremely satisfied customer and am happy Nick B. makes such amazing software!

17. Aguafuertes

    January 31st, 2005 at 1:40 am

    17

    John, let me know whether RSSOwl did make it for you or not. I like the programm and have been suggesting it to some friends, but no one ever had such a heavy load to manage. Really interests me …

18. Mark

    January 31st, 2005 at 11:20 am

    18

    I used amphetadesk, then FeedDeamon, then I found Blogmatrix’s Jaeger. Jaeger is a bit of an odd beast, but I’ve tried several things since (Omea most recently, also newsgator) and I keep coming back to Jaeger.

19. Markus

    January 31st, 2005 at 11:46 am

    19

    I’m using Newzcrawler for both RSSfeeds and usenet. Has built in ‘Blog This’ too.

20. Phillip Renouf

    January 31st, 2005 at 12:46 pm

    20

    RSS Bandit is what I use. It is a great little program that is quick and has lots of great features.

    One of the greatest features is being able to upload your blog list to an FTP server so you can blog at work and at home without having to re-read items.

    http://www.rssbandit.org

21. Alex Dutulescu

    February 2nd, 2005 at 4:20 pm

    21

    This the best I’ve tried.

    Have a loot at http://www.rssreader.com/

22. StickyC

    February 3rd, 2005 at 2:39 am

    22

    How many subscriptions do you have anyhow? I’ve got about a thousand subscriptions and have no issues with Bloglines. They’re all organized into folders, however.

23. John

    February 3rd, 2005 at 6:58 am

    23

    I have about 1,200. The problem with Bloglines and Firefox is it takes too long for the page to load. Especially if I edit or delete a subscription.

    I’m trying out Newz Crawler right now and so far I’m pretty happy with it. I’ll write more later.