So, I have been using the Usenet for a very long time and I have seen services come and go rather regularly in that time.
One service that has been there for a very long time is Binsearch.info. It is a search engine for files that get posted on the Usenet and while veteran users should not have any problems making use of it, users who never came into contact with newsgroups before may like a short introduction on how to use the service.
While it is not really difficult to use, it is important that you meet all prerequisites to successfully do so.
Lets start with the things you need to use Binsearch.info:
- You need access to the Usenet. If you are lucky, your Internet provider provides you with that option either free of charge or as an extra to your monthly subscription. Everyone else needs to subscribe to a service like Giganews for a monthly subscription fee. Plans differ in terms of bandwidth that you get per month and the money you pay for that.
- You also need a news reader. I have been using the commercial Newsbin software for the last decade or so, but there are free alternatives available as well like Sabnzbd. Both support the loading of so called nzb files which is what we need to use Binsearch.
Binsearch as mentioned earlier is an indexing service. The service itself does not host any files and is in may regards just like Google Search, only that it concentrates all its efforts on the Usenet and not the web as a whole.
You can use the basic search which is good for a quick search, or the advanced search which offers advanced parameters like filtering for specific file sizes or searching only in specific groups instead of a popular selection of groups.
Results are always displayed in the following fashion:
Each item that has been found is listed with its name, poster, group it has been posted in and age. To download one or multiple items, simply select them and click on the create nzb afterwards.
This creates a file that you need to load in to your usenet client. The client will do all the rest, download all files listed in that nzb file and depending on the client, unpack the files on your system as well automatically.
The nzb file contains the information where the files that you have selected can be found on the Usenet, and the client uses those information to download those files directly to the computer.
You can also browse a group using the browse newsgroups feature here which may come in handy if you are not looking for anything in particular. You do however need a good understanding of what gets posted in which newsgroup, as contents differ highly depending on that.
There are two additional options that I’d like to address briefly. You can subscribe to the RSS feed of a group you are interested in to receive information about new items once they get indexed by the usenet indexing service. The second feature is the watchlist which you can use to keep track of items that have not been uploaded completely yet.
That’s basically all there is to Binsearch. Are you using this service or another one?