If you're just getting started with Usenet it's easy to become confused about what exactly Usenet is. To make things even more confusing you'll often hear terms like "Retention" or "Completion rates" and wonder what exactly they mean. In this guide you'll learn the basics and by the end of of it you should be downloading from Usenet with ease. The biggest thing to remember is don't get intimidated by it all, it's much easier than you think.
Think of Usenet as an unmoderated forum full of millions of posts per day about just about anything you can think of. The best thing about Usenet, unlike torrents, is that it's anonymous (In regards to downloading), especially if you encrypt the traffic. The downside is it isn't free unless your ISP offers it. (Unfortunately most major ISP's have dropped Usenet access) You'll thus need a premium Usenet service which costs anywhere from $15 to $30 a month.
Usenet has both text based groups and binary groups. If you're looking to share files, which is obviously why you're here, you'll be interested in the alt.binary.* groups.
In order to begin using Usenet you'll need a few things such as:
- A premium newsgroup service
Free ones won't carry binary groups or will be insanely slow. Some good Usenet providers are Giganews, Newshosting or UsenetServer.
- Usenet software
Newsleecher is by far the best but it isn't free.(Trust me, it's worth the money!) Otherwise check out Grabit. You can also find a list of Usenet software, both free and pay, here.
- A way to search Usenet
Because of the fact Usenet has millions of posts daily you'll need a way to find what you're looking for easily. Newzbin.com is by far the best Usenet search "engine" out there. Volunteers organize posts on Usenet so that you can easily search for what you're looking for, download an NZB file which will load into you're Usenet client, and automatically start downloading the files you've requested. They also have a comment section for each post that allows you to know if somethings wrong with the file you're getting, if theres a better version of said file, or anything else helpful. Newzbin is pretty cheap too, it only costs a couple dollars a month. Unfortunately they sometimes are invite only so if you can't sign up you'll have to find someone to invite you. There are also free Usenet search engines out too. They aren't nearly as good as Newzbin but they also let you search for files and download NZB's. The only downside is the files aren't organized by hand so sometimes you'll end up not being able to find something or getting something you thought was something else. The best free Usenet search engine out right now is Newzleech.
You should now be up and running. Usenet might seem complicated at first but once everythings setup it's fairly easy to find just about anything. Be sure to keep an eye on this site for more updates soon!
