Switching over to Mac for a while

My Linux box blew a power supply. Man it's tough to live without all your favourite programs. While I'm getting if fixed I'm using a Mac as my work station. For the most part it's not a real difficult transition. I have some issues with the programs available for it.

I've tried two newsreaders. Hogwasher and MT-Newswasher. Both are fairly good. Unfortunately both make the assupmtion the server they are connecting to is stable. The server I use with my ISP tends to cut out. There is a free server I use but it is very tough to get in. As a result I have to sit in fromt of the Mac and constantly refresh the requests to connect to the servers.

Since my ISP is being very stupid about their NNTP servers (terrible completion rates and retention times) I am forced to run P2P software to download some free (fansub) video files. First off the activity is a) legal in Canada, b) encouraged by the fansubbers, c) sometimes encouraged by the owners of the copyright in the original country, d) physically easy to set up and maintain, e) cheap to run, f) fast enough for the people to get what they want ald leave without an impact on others. The edonkey network is OK if not a little slow. I haven't been able to get bittorrent to work properly so far (yes I did RTFM).

Given everything I've done today, edonkey is the clear winner.