RSS news feeds are increasingly popular in today’s connected world, especially for the mobile scene, where limited connection speeds make full web browsing difficult. So to get our news fix without visiting dozens of our favorite websites, we turn to RSS (Rich Site Summary) feeds. With these special feeds, we can receive constant updates from our favorite websites, right on our desktop. But of course we need a program built for this. Some new browsers have this feature, but a dedicated application is still the best way to organize and easily work with feeds from dozens of sources. And due to RSS popularity, there are dozens of readers available on the Web. For this week’s Freeware Frenzy I will be looking at four popular RSS readers and summing up their abilities to see which reigns supreme due to features, ease of use and overall completeness.
RSSReader 1.0.88.0 http://www.rssreader.com/
Installation for this program is limited to choosing a location and potential users. When you first open RSSReader, you’ll notice a few links on how to use the application and find new feeds. It also adds a desktop icon, start menu entry and a system tray icon. The sources for RSS feeds cover dozens of subjects and offer hundreds of feeds from world news by country, to sports, business, entertainment and technology. With so many options, you’re sure to find something interesting.
For this review, I’ll add the same set of six feeds to each program for comparison. Those feeds are PCMech’s Daily Tips, CNN top stories, Wired.com, ESPN basketball, Slashdot and the BBC News. After searching for the universal RSS icon for feeds on each website, you’ll notice the small orange buttons scattered across every major website.
Back with RSSReader, I copied the URLs from the web and hit the Add button. After inputting the address, RSSReader will test the link to be sure it is a valid and active feed. Note that on some feeds, it may be necessary to change "feed://" to "http://". You can then give the link a name and organize the feeds into folders. RSSReader uses a layout that will become increasingly familiar as I look through the other programs in this column; feeds on the left, headlines up top and stories in full at the bottom. Of course you can full screen the stories or open them in a separate browser window. RSSReader is rather plain, with few options and extras; the highlights being that you can change refresh rates and the option to email links to friends. RSSReader will keep you up to date on new stories, just like the other three apps in this review, by way of small pop-ups with notifications of each new set of stories from all of your feeds. To test resource usage, RSSReader used a maximum of 35MB open and around 6MB in the tray. Note that the more feeds covered by the program, the more memory it will consume.
RSSXpress 2.6.186 http://www.rssxpress.net/en/index.php?idNews=&page=
Installation here is slightly more involved, with language options (just two), a license agreement, choosing desktop and/or quick launch icon, a location, and start menu entry. A browser will open up with a help link that is currently under construction, but there are some sparsely populated forums to visit. But this is a small issue, because RSS programs are fairly straight forward. RSSXpress uses ‘the layout’ with a style similar to Internet Explorer. Pulling up full stories opens a new tab behind the headline, a handy way to monitor multiple stories. Extras are again limited but less so then RSSReader. RSSXpress includes its own catalogue of feeds, offers more customization options and handy news filters to delete the junk and keep only the stories you really want to see. RSSXpress uses more memory than RSSReader, at 47MB open and 10MB idling in the tray. Adding feeds was a bit easier, if your active browser window has a feed loaded, RSSXpress would auto-find it and have that link appear when you clicked Add.
FeedReader 3.08 http://www.feedreader.com/
Installation here is simple, with multiple languages to choose among, a license agreement, start menu entry, desktop and/or quick launch icons and if you would like to "configure the program to run on a portable disk". Installing takes only seconds and then you’ll need to choose a language (again?) and if you’d like the program to start with Windows. Next, you’ll choose feeds from the catalogue of topics; Business, Cars, Entertainment, News, Tech and Travel with a few, but popular feeds for each. Though FeedReader again uses the usual layout, I felt that its UI was the most polished of the group. FeedReader offers a couple of unique and interesting features called Enclosures and IntellUpdate. Enclosures refer to FeedReader’s ability to download multimedia associated with any feeds. So stories that are accompanied by images, videos or even podcasts can be stored in FeedReader for convenient access. IntellUpdate refers to FeedReader’s ability to notice how often new stories are available from feeds and adjust the refresh rate accordingly. So if a certain feed only updates once a day, there is no reason to check it every 10 minutes. This is more of a way to reduce server load for websites then an extra for us, the end-user but it shows that FeedReader is a very polished application. For memory usage, FeedReader used 45MB open and 5MB in the system tray.
Sharp Reader 0.9.7.0 http://www.sharpreader.net/
Installation here is another easy affair; choose a directory, start menu entry, desktop/quick launch icons (not checked by default, a first for the group) and launch after installation. The preview pane will show a quick run through of how to use SharpReader. You’ll also notice some preset feeds, two of which were in my test group. I removed the extras and added the rest of my choices. SharpReader features a filter like RSSXpress but very limited customization options. But I can cut the program a bit of slack being that it is still pre-version 1.0. This program was the biggest memory hog of the bunch, using 65MB open and 4MB in the tray.
To conclude, all of these programs will download RSS feeds and allow you to stay current on the world news. I never encountered a problem loading or refreshing my feeds in any of the applications, so it was the ease of use and extras that decided the winner. In the end, after examining each one, the winner is FeedReader 3. I felt that it was the best looking, easiest to use and possessed the most complete set of features for the group. I encourage everyone to try the programs for themselves, but if you want one solution, FeedReader should be your choice.
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