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News Force Review
By Michael
Boone, Copyright 2001
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| News Force
Price:
$25
Available
at: www.ruksun.com
|
Update
on News Force for the Pocket PC:
I
tried downloading the new Pocket PC version of News Force CE. I
was unable to get it to work with the proxy connection. And worse,
somehow the internal database it uses got messed up when I installed it,
and uninstalling the program does not remove the database it creates, so
it required a database utility to clean it up. Not a fun time.
From
these screenshots it
looks like it still uses the same gigantic font as always, but I
couldn't get it functional on my machine to get my own shots. Read
my review of the older Windows CE 2.11 version below:
Pros:
Can
download just headers and mark for later download.
Allows
replies to the group and by e-mail.
Cons:
What
is with the giant font?
The
company took a very long time to reply to my e-mail message.
Takes
entirely too long to switch between newsgroups.
You
see way too much of the hourglass.
Where
did my marked message go?
About
the software:
The
first thing I noticed with this program is that the font of the message
headers is waaaayyyy too big to suit me. Couldn't find an option to
change it. E-mailed the company about this. Got a response 25 days
later (but with an apology for the late reply), but they said you cannot
change the font. Downloading the headers went without a hitch. But
navigation was also a problem for my offline use. If I marked a message
for later download, I had a hard time finding it again. I could leave
all newsgroup messages marked "unread" and wade through all
the messages again trying to find which ones I marked and downloaded.
But if you mark all messages 'read' when you leave the newsgroup, then
download the marked messages, the marked messages stay marked 'read.'
There is no option I could find to display just the downloaded messages.
You can 'save' a message and then view it later, but I think that once
marked messages have been downloaded, they should be shown as 'unread'
again. There should be a way to view just the downloaded messages too.
Another
problem I had is that switching between the newsgroups on my Casio E-105
was really slow. It seemed to have to recompile its newsgroup list,
which let me see lots of the hourglass. The other news reader programs I
tried switched between groups much faster.
Things
I'd like to see:
1.
A response to my e-mail that I sent the company.
2.
Faster switching between newsgroups.
3.
A smaller font for the headers!
4.
Marked messages should be shown as "unread" after a download.
5.
A "show downloaded messages" view.
The
verdict:
This program probably works really well as an online news program, but I
did not care for it as an offline program.
My
Rating: 2 out of 10
New:
Here is another view on News Force:
FWIW
- I use the NewsForce from Ruskin on my z50 and like it very much.
First, the z50 has a 640x480 screen so the font issue is not a big deal.
In fact, I rather like the font selection for the H/PC format..
Second,
I found the header/article system rather nice. I was able to
connect to my ISP via phone line, download the headers, then mark them
all for download in a easy step and then perform the download.
While this took a few minutes (I downloaded all the subscribed groups),
it made offline reading on the plane simple.
For
my money, I give Ruskin NewsForce 7 out of 10 instead of 2
MCA
Mike
Amundsen
Vertigo
Software
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