FeedDemon

CNET Editors' Rating 8.0/10 Excellent Editorial policies >>

Product Summary

The good: Excellent interface; helpful wizards; good for beginners.

The bad: Online support could be better.

The bottom line: May be too simplistic for more advanced newsreader users.

CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: Jeff Bertolucci
Edited by: Robert Vamosi
Reviewed on: 07/15/2004
Released on: 12/19/2003

FeedDemon is a well-crafted standalone newsreader that's ideal for novices who've never heard of an RSS feed. The $29 FeedDemon features an outstanding setup wizard that explains basic newsreader concepts ("A channel is a source of news items. For example, the RSS feed for the New York Times is a channel.") For some, this advice may be a bit basic. Nonetheless, we have to give kudos to the vendor, Bradbury Software, for explaining a relatively new software genre to the uninitiated masses.

Like its competitors, FeedDemon installs in less than a minute. In our tests, download and installation took a few minutes and proceeded without a hitch. We particularly liked FeedDemon's setup wizard, which allows you to subscribe to an unlimited number of popular RSS feeds by simply checking a box besides each feed's name. Of course, there are thousands of other feeds on the Net, so FeedDemon provides links to several other RSS directories.

FeedDemon's interface is very good; however, its default setting, which places the headline and browser panes side by side, is somewhat clumsy. Reading a news story in the undersize browser requires incessant scrolling. Fortunately, you can relocate the browser to the bottom via the View pull-down menu, giving you a wider browser.

FeedDemon is easy to configure and allows you to sort stories by keyword search.

This program offers several features that we particularly like. FeedDemon's Watch Channels feature searches for news items containing user-specified keywords and places them in a separate group, making them easier to find. The Cleanup Wizard is handy for removing old RSS feeds--the default cleanup period is 30 days, but you can change that to a shorter or longer period. We're also fond of FeedDemon's News Bins, which allow you to archive stories simply by dragging a headline and placing it in a storage bin in the left-side column. FeedDemon updates whenever a subscribed channel sends out a new feed.

One gripe: The online help section is weak, but at least there's a support forum where you can post questions and get answers from other users. As mentioned, FeedDemon isn't free, but at $30, it won't bust your budget, either.