I missed this earlier in the month but CNET put together a review of some of the more popular RSS readers at Make your own headlines.
They looked at Bloglines (rated 7.7), Rojo (rated 6.7), Google Reader (no rating given), FeedDemon 2 (rated 8.0) and Newsagator Inbox 2.6 (rated 7.5).
What RSS/News Reader/s do you use?
found via a Feed is Born
On my mac I use NewsFire ($18.95) and on my PC I use FeedReader, both excellent apps. I love newsfire because of its 1 hand navigation (you can navigate the entire program with your arrow keys), and I love FeedReader which is free, it does pretty much everything you need it to do.
google reader
Color me unimpressed.
The Google Reader review is the older version, not the newer one. That makes this comparison useless. The new GR is way superior to the old one, and is getting great reviews all over the place. I’m noticing more and more readers coming from Google reader as well. And a lot of my blogging readers are using GR sharing on their blogs now in lieu of a blogroll.
used to use bloglines for a while till the google reader upgrade…
well, i like the option to have all new posts shown in the same page “in g- reader” case.. i like the outlook
however, i hate its slowness.. it takes a bit more time to load an rss for the 1st time, and sometimes takes forever to show the latest posts in some blogs i am subscribed to.
I miss the option for having a public “bloglines” account! used to like wondering between my friends’ accounts and see what feeds they are subscribed to. Now now more availability for this option in google.
hmm, whatelse.. nothing serious i can remember at the now. for more personal updates i’ll make sure to write.
I’ve been playing with the new Google reader, but it annoys me a little when I switch from one feed to the next. There’s a noticeable delay (compared to Bloglines). Also, not sure if this was the case with the previous google reader, but the new reader doesn’t report the number of subscribers to FeedBurner (or other services).
I’m using NewAlloy but they’ve been having a few gliches lately, so the new and improved Google Reader is used as backup.
Couldn’t understand how to make the old Google Reader work; and I’m pretty net-savvy.
I’ve been using the new Google reader for a couple of weeks and it’s the best one I’ve used so far. I started with Bloglines ages ago and I’ve tried Firefox live bookmarks, Feed Daemon and I even shelled out for Attensa for outlook, which was 20$ to discover something that didn’t work.
I’m finding very useful Netvibes, I’m using it like RSS reader, mail reader, todo lists, Notes and other useful things.
NetNewsWire for Mac.
FeedDemon on Windows and was an avid user of Newsgator Inbox for Outlook.
Bloglines. Always been a big fan and the recent rework has made it slicker and much, much faster. Especially if you’re running 230 odd feeds like me!
I’ve not found anything else that comes close to making it easy and simple for me to keep track of all these feeds, and I have tried.
I use RSS Bandit – http://www.rssbandit.org/
Prefer a stand-alone to web based reader and like it’s ability to sync my feed list (+ read state) on multiple machines.
I am using Newz Crawler ( it’s not for free) but but it handles big amounts of feeds.
Google Reader.
but previously ran with Bloglines.
I do miss having the notifier on my toolbar.
I was a Bloglines devotee until the new Google Reader launched. The fact that it marks each article as you read it, instead of a whole folder in bulk matters alot to me, as I have to read my feeds “shotgun” style, i.e. I don’t usually get long spans of time to just sit and read.
If you find you have to take in your RSS in short spurts, and you haven’t tried Google Reader yet, I’d highly recommend it.
I’ve been using FeedDemon for office use/local and love the watches. I have a ton of RSS’s from deal sites and “watch” the bargains as they come out.
When on the road, I use Google Reader. However, it doesn’t have any watches, but its probably the best out there right now.
I used to use Flock, but I got tired of that, so now I’m using Google Reader. In between I had used NetNewsWire and NewsFire for a bit, but gReader is so much more convenient than using an external program, and it is essentially as functional as anything else I’ve come across. The freeness is nice too.
Netvibes is by far the best web based reader I’ve tried – dead easy, quick and a joy to behold. But I’m looking to try an app based reader – any suggestions? I’m running OSX
Well, I’ve always used Bloglines and I’m happy with it – right now I don’t have the time or desire to try the new Google reader, as Bloglines does what I want it to do and works great ;).
Feed Demon is a 9.9 for me.
I use Newshutch. It’s a pretty nice application written in Rails. No ads, but it gets a bit sluggish at times.
The Sage plugin for Firefox.
Recently switched from Sage (for Firefox) to Google Reader.
I use Newsfire on my Macbook. Works great and was well worth the money considering that it’s probably my second most used program after Firefox.
I used to use Feeddemon on my PC, worked quite well too.
I use FeedReader and am very happy with it. Since this is the first (read only) reader I’ve ever used I have no frame of reference to compare the others. I find it easy to use and quick to update.
I used Bloglines, I’m trying Google Reader and of the moment it looks like I’m going back to Bloglines.
Google Reader has a bug where you can’t unsubscribe from some feeds. It’s amazingly annoying.
Google Reader, though it can be a bit slow at times and as engtech mentioned above, it does get a bit buggy when you try to unsubscribe from feeds.
Google Reader for me. Works great!
– Bryan
http://www.bryancfleming.com
Hi Darren, my first comment here although have been subscribe to your blog almost a year. I use Bloglines previously and have switched over to Google Reader after its major update. I like the way Google Reader mark my read item, not the whole folder as once (blogline).
I have only used Bloglines but am open to switching if I can find something better. I am going to look into the other RSS readers you’ve mentioned here.
I use Alertbear and love it. It’s a small feed reader that just sits in my taskbar and pops up a simple notification when it grabs a new post.
News Alloy – only one reasonable choice for my 1340 feeds
don’t even advise anything else :)
and CNET.. they always wrote for money
SharpReader is quite good – uses the IE engine in its viewing pane, and I am just trying Feed Reader.
I like the looks of RSS Bandit though and will give that a go.
Netvibes! Like the online tool much better than the desktop software I was using – frees up my computer resources when we are talking a couple hundred RSS feeds ;-)
Bloglines for me!
Google Reader all the way….. but i can say it for sure, cause i started using rss with Google Reader, never tested any others…..
I had just started out to try RSS about 2 weeks ago. Now using Bloglines after looked through a few others. Like the nice and simple layout. So far serving me good. Of coz no harm trying others like new Google reader later.
I use Google Reader. Most of the time I simply check it from my personalized Google Home Page, but when I get really far behind in my RSS reading I’ll visit the actual site.
I am a fan of Bloglines, but I might end up transitioning. However, as it is, I’ve got over 120 feeds and the status quo seems to be holding well for me.
I use Sharp Reader. I`ts simple, quick and free.
What about Vvvroom, it’s a free news web based newsreader. There’s a bunch of already stored popular feeds to choose from with the usual enter a direct RSS feed ulr interface.