« Return to: News on Demand
| RSS Readers | Price | Atom Support(1) | Pros | Cons | Comments |
| Amphetadesk v. 0.93.1 disobey.com (stand-alone, in-browser editing) | Free | No | * Works with multiple browsers and Oss * Open source * Subscribe button for your browser toolbar can discover sites' RSS feeds | * Single-page display only * Huge alphabetical list of thousands of feeds may be intimidating. | Versions for Win 95, 98, and up; Mac OS 8, 9, and OS-X; and Linux. Configuration and browsing are handled via Web pages installed on your local machine and built with Perl and HTML. (  ) |
| Awasu www.awasu.com (stand-alone, embedded browser) | Free personal edition (advanced edition $25; not tested) | No | * Many ways to customize, filter news * Detailed online documentation * System-tray alert balloons * Autodiscovery of feeds | * Small, idiosyncratic toolbar icons * Breadth of features can be intimidating: * No feed archiving, at press time | Programmers can use plug-ins to generate feeds for sites that don't have them, or even query a corporate database. Awasu also licenses media companies to distribute the software for use with their feeds. Free version limited to 100 channels, hourly updates. (  ) |
| Bloglines bloglines.com (Web-based subscription) | Free | Yes | *Works with any Web browser and OS * Easy to use * Imports and exports feed lists * Archives headlines on its servers | * Uncertain future as a free service | Bloglines offers a lot of configuration options for a Web service, and it houses them in a pretty slick site. Helpful features let you search through past postings. (  ) |
| BottomFeeder 3.4 cincomsmalltalk.com/BottomFeeder (stand-alone, embedded browser) | Free | Yes | * Multiplatform, open source * Two- or three-pane display * Powerful search filters * Slim mode saves screen real estate * Plug-ins for blogging, IRC | * Documentation gets technical for beginners * Special browser uses nonstandard font views * Red headline list hard on eyes | Uses TwoFlower--a multiplatform browser that supports tabbed browsing--sharing a virtual machine to save system resources. ( ) |
| FeedDemon www.bradsoft.com (stand-alone, embedded browser) | $30 | Yes | * Flexible layout * Can filter feeds based on searches * Helps find feeds on pages you?re browsing | * Needs better documentation of advanced features * At press time, support forums required a Usenet news reader | Flexible placement of browser window helps on smaller screen. You can group channels and display their headlines on a "newspaper," a page controlled by your choice of styles for quick skimming. ( ) |
| FeedReader (alpha 2.5) www.feedreader.com (stand-alone, embedded browser) | Free | Yes | * Huge list of Moreover news feeds * Tray popup alerts of new headlines *Headline search * Designed to work with Windows 95 and Internet Explorer 4 | * Big, distracting tooltip balloons of feed information ** Pre-installed newsisfree feedlist produced not found error * Support link to SourceForge has more questions than answers. | Impressive functionality for older systems, but lacks features and documentation of some other free readers. Fast and lightweight. ( ) |
| FireFox RSS Reader Panel ( v 1.7) fls.moo.jp (FireFox browser sidebar) | Free | Yes | * Smooth sidebar integration with FireFox * Search bar to locate new feeds with Feedster, Daypop, and others * Customizable layout of display; adjustable properties for each feed | * English-language documentation and support are limited to BBS * Duplicate Feeds folder on bookmark list displays raw RSS code in the browser window. | May be daunting for beginners, but excellent for FireFox users accustomed to the Mozilla system. Controls are on View/Toolbars and Options/Extensions menus; right mouse button to access properties menu for each feed. ( ) |
| Headline Viewer 0.9.8 headlineviewer.com (stand-alone, embedded browser) | Free preview; $25 shareware fee planned | No | * Skinnable interface * Lists categories in one window, and feeds in a contextual window to allow nesting, subcategories * Automatic headline provider feature flips pages through news items for hands-free browsing | * Idiosyncratic look (main menu at bottom of window) and terminology (Providers) * Many settings in overly complex panels, including categories and providers | New version needs documentation. Service says, Registration will not be required until the program reaches version 1.0, sometime in the year 2002. (  ) |
| NewsGator 2 newsgator.com (Outlook plug-in) | $29 | Yes | * A right-click lets you subscribe to feeds from Internet Explorer * Subscription version lets you check feeds in many more ways | * Outlook integration can be confusing; message windows still have reply buttons | Unmatched add-on capability as part of subscription-based online service, which includes synchronized versions for cell phones, PDAs, and even TV sets (via Windows Media Center Edition). ( ) |
| NewsMonster newsmonster.org (Mozilla browser sidebar) | Free; Pro version $29 | Yes | * Collapsible sidebar in Mozilla * Right-click feed links to subscribe * Site filters for custom feeds (Pro) * Simple configuration wizard | * Configuration options are housed in many locations, including preferences, stacked menu bars in left panel, and drop down menus | Pro version moving into social software arena with shared blogrolls, ratings, reputation system, popularity index. ( ) |
| Oddpost oddpost.com (Web-based e-mail and RSS reader client) | $30 per year (includes e-mail) | No | * Clean, simplified Outlook-style interface with RSS feeds as a mail folder. * No plug-ins, download, or installation * Nice collection of sample feeds, from BBC to customized Amazon searches | * Dependent on Oddpost's servers * Requires Internet Explorer * Full content view only in separate browser window | Bare-bones but quick feed reader embedded in Web-based integrated e-mail; ad-free; plans for expanded RSS services, but not as ambitious or crowded as NewsGator. ( ) |
| Pluck RSS Reader www.pluck.com (Explorer sidebar) | Free | No | * Customizable update frequency * Clean layout and Add a Feed wizard are beginner-friendly | * Internet Explorer limits options for tweaking the interface * Beta version had problems displaying some blog entries | Pluck plans to pay the bills with PowerSearch features for Amazon and EBay, with more specialized search engines to follow. (Pluck pledges to be spyware- and adware-free.) (  ) |
| Radio Userland radio.userland.com (stand-alone, in-browser editing) | $40 per year | No | * Serves as a blogging tool * Price includes space for a blog * Also works with Netscape, Mozilla * Includes premium feeds | * Bare-bones news reader display * No long-term storage of news feeds * Can?t sort new postings by feeds or categories | This reader is showing its age, but its integration of an aggregator and desktop-based Weblog content management tool is hard to beat. Access to New York Times feeds is nice, too. ( ) |
| Rocketinfo RSS Reader www.rocketinfo.com (browser-based online service) | Free | Yes | * No plug-ins or download required * Clean graphical interface * Create custom feeds from searches * Works with most Web browsers | * Big tooltip windows on featured channels can be jumpy while graphic headings load * Some may not like default subscription folders and large control buttons | The RocketNews.com search engine supports custom newsfeeds. Responsive development team fixed a bug that had added single quotes to link and image addresses. Usual caveats about free services apply. ( ) |
| RSS Captor 1.5 rsscaptor.com (stand-alone, embedded browser) | $20 | No | * Can minimize to system tray, play sound to alert to incoming news. * Multichannel search function. Store and search subscribed messages. | * No content display for some weblogs (without RSS title codes) * Some weblogs appear as uninterpreted HTML. * Weak documentation | Trial version not only limited the number of feeds but added a a count-down timer reminder that it was a trial version. In a crowded field of readers, that and the other problems mentioned will dissuade most users. (  ) |
| RSS Reader 1.0.88.0 rssreader.com (stand-alone, embedded browser) | Free | Yes | * Configurable screen, fonts and style sheets * Feed password support * System tray icon, popup headlines with clever pushpin icon to save for later reading. | * Hard to manage feed groups * Internet Explorer script error messages with internal browser view of some pages. | Requires .Net framework, but uses any default browser; runs under Win 98, NT, ME, 2000, XP. ( ) |
| Sauce Reader 1.3 (beta) synop.com (stand-alone, embedded browser) | Free for personal use; $25 for organization, commercial use | Yes | * One-click subscription and full-text search of received items. * Integrated weblogging, feed discovery * Attractive variety of viewing styles for feeds. | * No preinstalled sample feeds * Problems importing feed lists * Browser address bar did not always reflect page being viewed | This promising beta requires the .Net framework and includes weblogging ability that works with Blogger, Movable Type, and other blog services. Promising beta. ( ) |
| SharpReader 0.9.4.1 sharpreader.net (stand-alone, embedded browser) | Free (donations) | Yes | * Allows you to sets download frequency by feed or category * Drag and drop as well as autodetected feed subsctiption * System tray popups for incoming news * Filtering and searching * Shows threaded connections between items | * Some features need more explaining, such as the Feed Properties menu. * Popup alert default size larger than necessary | Requires .Net framework. Uses several plug-ins to add weblogging capability. Uncluttered interface without proliferation of buttons and menu. Threaded message view handy for blogs that reference each other. ( ) |
1Atom is a new format that extends RSS in a number of ways. All readers here support RSS .9, .91, .92, 1.0, and 2.0. See find.pcworld.com/42432 for more on differences between the standards."
HOW WE TEST: We test rewritable DVD drives under Windows XP Home on PCs with 1.67-GHz Athlon XP 2000+ processors and 512MB of DDR SDRAM. To test each drive, we use the bundled DVD video authoring, mastering, and packet-writing software; we use vendor-supplied media or Verbatim media. Tests conducted by the PC World Test Center. All rights reserved.