If you've ever wondered why you should even consider wasting your time and money to use the Easynews service, here are the seven best reasons I could think of:

1. Speed.  No more waiting hours and days for downloads to finish.  On a standard DSL connection, I can reach speeds of 540Kb/s meaning a GB lands on my computer in about 20-25 minutes. (Yes the math is a bit off, sometimes the speed increases, sometimes it falls to around 500KB/s -- but overall it is freakin fast).  Apparently the speed you can achieve is only limited by the speed of your connection unlike P2P networks.




2. Variety.  Easynews is not limited to one genre of download.  You can download anything - movies, ebooks, audio books, music, software and more.  Just like any file sharing network you are going to find copyrighted materials so be careful what you are downloading, but Easynews is an awesome file sharing repository.




3. Global Search.  If it wasn't for this feature that was recently implemented, I wouldn't be recommending Easynews to anyone.  However, now that you can visit one global search page where you can search and filter results with accurate precision, you can actually find what you are looking for rather than browsing newsgroups and attempting to locate all files.  Global search has made Easynews a leader in bringing usenet to the masses.  It is intuitive and gives you what you want to find with the ease of a search engine.




4. Access via the web.  You don't need any special software like a newsreader to access the binary files on Usenet.  If you want to participate in text discussions, you do, but if all you are interested in is downloading files, you can do it right from Internet Explorer or Firefox.  You will need a download manager, however they are free in some instances and integrate right into your browser, so you won't even know it's there.




5. Unbelievable Community Support.  The very nature of Usenet is arranged hierarchically so it naturally brings people interested in a certain topic to a certain place.  Therefore, when you ask a question, you get people knowledgeable about the subject answering you.  They share your interests or they wouldn't be frequenting the same newsgroup.  Nine times out of 10 all you have to do is ask for something and someone will post it.  As well, Easynews actively supports a number of charitable organizations and research projects.




6. Anonymous Downloads.  It's as anonymous as anonymous on the internet can get.  If you are concerned about anonymous downloads, you'll be happy to know that Easynews has one of the most aggressive privacy policies in the industry.  They log absolutely nothing except who to bill each month.  That said, if a law enforcement agency tells them to, they will cooperate - so again, download responsibly.




7. Value for the money.  Overall, Easynews surpasses other Usenet providers in terms of what you get for your money.  The $9.98/month price tag gives you 20GB of transfer, but if you don't use it, it is rolled into your next month's balance and keeps accumulating.  Unless you are an extremely heavy downloader and have a hard drive to support your habit, you are going to accumulate plenty of GBs of transfer. 

AND BONUS REASON #8.  No share ratio and no dropped files.  You can download as much as you want and never upload a file.  They don't care.  You never have to worry about someone on the other end turning their computer off when you are 99% finished after four days of waiting for that humongous file.  All of your downloads are going to finish.

There you have it.  Seven, plus 1, excellent reasons to part with $9.98/month rather than waste anymore time with P2P networks, bittorrent and the like.  What are you waiting for?  Start downloading now.  Do you have a reason to use Easynews that doesn't appear above?  I'd love to hear about it.