Seeking advice on usenet and irc clients ...

[barney]

Folk,

It appears that I'll shortly have need of an irc client, as well as a usenet client.  Google has not helped.  Oh there's information - too damned much of it! - but there's no way I could even begin to evaluate all that I've found before the contract expires  .

Last time I used either was over a decade ago ... mIRC was about all there was, save for a few homegrown clients, and I cannot begin to recall what I was using then for a news reader.

I'd like to find something reasonably versatile - cross-platform (Win/Linux) would be nice, but not required.  Free would be nice, but I'm not averse to a reasonable cost.

ChatZilla looks nice, but I've too many things now that run in a browser - sometimes I need the browser for other things  .  I'd really like to find something standalone, desktop client(s).  Same for the usenet client(s).  These will be running on Win7 x64 boxes or on an x86 Linux box, prolly Amahi or an Ubuntu variant (although the Linux flavours are subject to adjustment).

I know several of you are involved with irc, and assume, by corollary, that some of you are also involved with usenet ... when I was there, one kinda led to the other  .

Any recommendations would be appreciated - I need shortcuts/pointers at this stage ... I'm over-tested    .

[MilesAhead]

For usenet client, text mode discussion group I'd recommend Gravity.

http://mpgravity.sourceforge.net/

It should run on Linux under Wine.

Gravity is very similar to the Agent newsreader UI.  I think you can do everything with Gravity that you can do with the paid version of Agent.

For binary newsreader I'd recommend either Newsbin or Usenet Explorer.

irc I haven't used to any extent in ages so I'll refrain from suggesting any clients.

[barney]

Hm-m-m ... everything I've seen so far on such clients indicates a dichotomy - read or download.  Granted, I'm reading summaries of the clients, but they seem to be either read/write or binary downloaders  .  Is there no longer a single client that does both?  Or am I making assumptions again  ?

[MilesAhead]

Gravity will download binaries.  But it's not optimized for large binary downloads.  Newsbin can download a 32 GB or larger video, run the par repair if needed and automatically unrar.

Readers like Gravity and Agent news reader are more tuned to download pictures and smaller binaries. Newsbin and Usenet Explorer don't choke on the multi-GB downloads. But you wouldn't want to use either for usenet discussion groups.  Gravity, Agent and similar clients are optimized for that purpose.  The binary capabilities are secondary. Just saves you from using another software to download photos.

[skwire]

I like AdiIRC as an IRC client for two reasons.  One, it handles Unicode/UTF-8 very well and, two, it uses an MDI interface.  It's also freeware so that's a bonus.  For a text only Usenet client, I use a news plugin for my email client of choice, Becky.  For the times I need to grab Usenet binaries, I use GrabIt.  For the record, I have used Gravity, extensively, in the past and it's a great client.

[barney]

OK, sounds as though I've a couple of agents for tryouts.  I like the MDI aspect of skwire's AdiIRC client, and now that I've been a bit more schooled, both MilesAhead and skwire have endorsed Gravity.  I don't perceive any major downloads for this contract, so 'twould seem Gravity would do the trick.  I'll start playing with both, try to get up to speed.  (Why, oh why, do clients insist upon outre measures when most of their needs could be met via email?  Guess it's just what they're accustomed to doing?)