Well I bought an RSS reader and already regret it

So I had winnowed the RSS reader search down to FeedDemon and NewsGator. I have been traveling for two weeks, so I haven’t really had time to do a head to head comparison, and had only played with each for about two hours. My trial on both ran out, so I had to bite the bullet. My decision criteria really wasn’t that complicated. I didn’t want another icon on my desktop, so I went with the Outlook plugin. Plunked down $29 for NewsGator. They should change their name. Gator is a bad word.

The first sign of trouble was in configuring postings out of the thing. With FeedDemon, they had a handy feature where they just auto discovered your posting app (I have been using w.Bloggar) and they automatically set it up. Well NewsGator doesn’t work with w.Bloggar and you have to install another app from another guy: public MattBerther : ISerializable: MovablePoster. This plug-in is free now, but no gaurantee of how long. And it is definitely beta stuff. It took three trips to the support boards to get it working and configured correctly. And when you do post, NewsGator conveniently slaps it’s “related” link on my posts which encourage people on my blog to click through to NewsGator’s on-line services. Now I paid for my software and I don’t want to be a shill for their viral marketing please. I haven’t found where to turn this off yet. Also, this plug-in formats posts VERY differently than Bloggar and the difference is obvious. Now I am sure that with some programming in the template I could fix that, but I am a busy guy. This is alot of braindamage for a simple thing. Oh, and the “post to my blog” tab is well hidden in a couple of NewsGator menus. It is not a right-click option or an easy to find button on a menu bar. Why not?

I also have noticed that my outlook has slowed down considerably. Right now I am working over a VPN from home to the office server. I bet NewsGator is pulling everything from the net and putting it on my server then sending it along to my client. In that respect, a separate application would be better because they would just pull directly to the client and bypass the VPN/server. When I was running it, FeedDemon was very fast. Then there is the problem of new postings to my RSS feeds. With FeedDemon I got a cute pop-up window from the taskbar for new posts like I do when I get new e-mail. Of course this can be turned off. In News Gator it can’t be turned on or off, it is not available. Another feature I kinda liked in FeedDemon was the ability to define a category of feeds and have the application assemble a “newspaper” for you with all the recent posts. Very cool.

FeedDemon also did a very good job of auto discovering the different RSS and Atom formats and finding the right place for a feed. NewsGator is very touchy that you get the stuff exactly right.

And then there is the problem of business model. With NewsGator you have to pay extra for things like reading your feeds in a browser, and custom searches. Many other readers offer that free. I hope some of this gets included, there will definitely be price pressure to do so.
Wow, sounds like I should have bought FeedDemon eh? Well I am an American at heart and am easilly swayed by convenience. Lured in with a promise of easy integration. I will stick with News Gator for awile, but may end up changing. Not sold yet. But they do have my money…