Use the net! - usenet downloading

You've been briefly introduced to torrents, rapidshare and web ways of getting what you are looking for.

It is important to say that none of the sources we have covered so far are valid as sources for official csvs. Only direct source site can be a valid source. Yet you can be lucky and cut down your download times alot if you utilize torrents or the web.

But still!, there are faster ways and if you have a fast inet line and alot og free GB (woops, let's say TB) on your hdd then you can dig into the usenet alias news groups. You will have to buy a usenet account. They cost anything from 9.95$ USD to 25$ USD per month. It is pretty cheap and you get excellent service for that amount of money.

There are several usenet providers out there which are considered as good, but put you money on one of these three

• Giga News ( http://www.giganews.com/ )
  
• Easy News ( http://www.easynews.com/ )
  
• Usenet Server ( http://www.usenetserver.com/en/index.php )

Once you have an usenet account then you need a download client. Much like the μTorrent client for use with torrents you need special software for usenet. The choice of usenet clients is based on religion, but a few is worth mentioning.

• Forte Agent ( http://www.forteinc.com/ )
• NewsLeecher ( http://www.newsleecher.com/ )
• NewsBin Pro ( http://www.newsbin.com/ )

You can use all 3 as trial for a limited periode of time, although Forte Agent is crippleware in the free version. All three can import NZB files (they are much like the .torrent file) and places like NewzBin they are all categorized and listed.

Groups
Usenet consists of groups. Each group can has a specific purpose, which normally is written in a FAQ or similar and each group has rules. There are well over 80.000+ groups. By far most groups contain discussions and help on normal subject and thus they contain text messages.

Some groups are binary groups. They contain little text, but on the other hand they contain alot of binaries. These binaries can be anything, a MP3, ZIP, RAR, AVI, JPG, MPG, VOB, ISO etc. These binary groups normally have the word .binaries. as part of the group name. Such a group could be

• alt.binaries.test

The name of the group is alt (alternate) binaries (binary content) test (for test purpose). Most binary groups are named alt.binaries..

Reasons!
The reason for using usenet is that it holds alot of data. A binary group can easily hold a terabyte of data and you can go back 240 days and see what someone put into the group. On EasyNews and UsenetServer you can utilize Global Search and search through an insane amount of data to find something specific for your taste. The usenet servers also have alot of bandwidth. My bet is that you can max out your inet line 100% while downloading from usenet. So!, TOP SPEED.

Contents
The contents of each usenet group is not organized in any specific way, nor can you trust the names of the articles to contain what they claim to contains. There is quite alot of spam on usenet. If you want to utilize usenet best then you should get to know WinRAR (compression / extraction utility) and QuickPar (PAR2 utility for verifying/fixing data). Some of the contents can be downloaded and viewed directly. Some has to be downloaded and extracted/fixed before viewing is possible.

Where
So how to choose among the 80.000+ groups. Basically you can go for the groups with the most interesting names and the biggest post count and it indicates an active group. This will allow you to hit wide and get stuff. But it is not always the case for a person with collectors syndrome. If you suffer from CS then you should look towards:



The lingo for groups are abpn, for the 1st group and so forth. The abecr group is special. The titles are not searchable and nor is the contents. You will need QuickPAR to be able to handle contents in this group and you will need to rename some files before you become a player in abecr. The group community wants to keep each group spam free, and if you spam post then you can be pretty sure that you will get an abuse mail sent to your Usenet provider and they will possible close down your account. Advice: lay low, observe, lurk and download. If you decide to get into the game then start off by saying thanks to the posters. If you decide to become a player and contribute, then be sure what you do, know the tools, know the ways, read the rules.