~terry
Wed, Jul 24, 1996 (12:26)
seed
Free Agent -- A newcomer to the newsreader business, Forte's Free
Agent has the most features (with the exclusion of its big sister,
Agent) and is easily the most configurable. In fact, there are so
many options in this newsreader that novice users may get lost. For
the complete freeware newsreader, there is no need to look further
than Free Agent. Configurable options include offline/online
newsreading, font colors, screen size, multithreading, thread
watching, thread ignoring, mark for later retrieval, and many, many
more. One of its best features is the ability to extract information
from another newsreader during setup so that the user doesn't have
to input the same information over and over and ... Some
additional features include the ability to switch between screens
effortlessly, quick find, send mail, word wrap, quick purging, and
automatic 'catching up'. With the introduction of Free Agent v1.0,
several new essential features have been added, including
improvements in overall speed, database compression, and database
purging. This version is free for academic, non-profit, and similar
non-commercial uses -- for commercial users (and power users),
Agent is available with full support and additional features.
Pros: Tons of features, easy customization, extensive on-line help
available
Cons: Lacks some of the better features found in Agent
New: Improved speed, database purging and database compression
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Date of Review: 7/7/95
~acumen
Thu, Aug 15, 1996 (23:16)
#1
While I may be wrong, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to view binaries with fagent. It seems that a seperate grafics viewer is required.
~rljl
Tue, Oct 8, 1996 (17:46)
#2
Try News Express, it has an inline viewer for jpg files.
~jake
Mon, Nov 18, 1996 (11:31)
#3
I tried FreeAgent on my Windows 3.1 system last night for the first time. A couple of notes comparing it with NetScape. I hope there is a way around these operational issues.
Switchable Servers
NetScape's newsreader displays a list of news servers and even allows me to add other news servers to the list. This was especially important to me because I *do* use an alternate news server for symantec product issues. I saw no such capability in FreeAgent, nor does the review on Agent mention such a feature. To my personal needs, this could be a showstopper issue. It was apparent that I could MANUALLY change the server name by typing over it. Yuchh! I wanna list box (at the very least).
Compacting Newsgroup Names
(Not to be confused with compacting databases) NetScape's reader groups the newsgroups nicely. For example, the family "alt" is the beginning of the name of over 1000 newsgroups. I just saw it as "alt" next to a folder icon. CLick on the folder and it expands the alt family down one level, many of which still have the folder icon. This makes it very easy to scan which newsgroups to subscribe to. Again, I could find no such capability in Agent. I would have to look at every blessed newsgroup, in orde
to scan for what I want. If this is not necessary, please tell me about it!
On the up side: Someone in this forum commented that Agent seems to need a separate JPG viewer. That's a problem? Get'em (viewers) by the dozen off the net! If Agent had it's own viewer, it would take much longer to download. And who needs the wheel reinvented yet again?
~cfiases
Mon, Jun 8, 1998 (23:07)
#4
I've been trying to get FreeAgent settled down and keep running into various bugs. One problem is that the dates have now become "06/DD/YY" (the "DD" and "YY" is exactly what is thrown in ALL date fields). Another is that FreeAgent has a mind of its own when marking news items read. No matter how often you set the option to stop doing that -- next boot-up and things are back to what the "default" is.
I do like the layout but can't think of why it got 5 stars.