No Long Days

I have been a FeedDemon user for many years. I originally bought Newsgator for Outlook in 2004. However, I wanted to read feeds on more than one machine and not have to repeat what I was reading. I think it was back in 2005 when they announced the Newsgator Sync playform. At the time if you subscribed to Newsgator.com you could also d/l the Client readers for free. Well, they weren't free they were included with your subscription.

Since I didn't use outlook at home I opted for FeedDemon on my PC and Newsgator for Outlook at work. The "hype" was that the sync platform would keep your read statuses in sync across your clients. Well, this did work somewhat. It never worked properly for a year or so until I kept complaining on the support forum. I was constantly told it worked fine and they couldn't duplicate it. But, eventually others joined me. Newsgator finally looked at the problem and did find a bug in their sync plat form.

As I move to the Mac and Newsgator moved to giving it's client apps away for free I installed Netnews on my Mac. This would sync with FeedDemon. It worked fairly well but there were still sync issues.

Recently I decided to try Google Reader. After seeing Don MacAlister's screen cast on it I decided to give it a try. I imported an OPML file from FeedDemon into it. I decided to give it a week. Well, Google Reader is brilliant. It is very similar to Google Mail. Simple, well laid out with the features you need. After about a month of using it I decided it was time to delete FeedDemon and Netnews Wire and not look back.

Here are what I see the main advantages of Google Reader over the OS native client apps.

1. Portability. No install is needed and I can use it anywhere. It also shares the login credentials with my gmail account so I don't have to remember YAP (yet another password).

2. Performance. Google reader is fast. It seems to be constantly updating my feeds.

3. Organization. The folders in Google Reader are great. This is something that FeedDemon users have been requesting for years. I think even the most recent version still doesn't add this. (Although I could be wrong about that.)

4. Footprint. I now have 1 less app on my PC and my Mac that is running in the background. Once less app polling the internet. Once less app storing data on my hard drive. This is important stuff. Especially when you have a long in the tooth PC on which you need to limit how much background stuff you are running on it.

5. Search. Ok, need I say it? This is google... so searching my feeds is awesome and fast. The search on FeedDemon leaves much to be desired. Especially since FD doesn't want you to retain all your feeds which causes it to bog down. Although there were plans to move the FD storage into a real database like SQLite or something. That said, I have no idea what the retention with google is and how far back it is really searching. Anyone know? Please comment if you do.

There are some downsides to doing this as pointed out via some twitter conversations.

1. Trust. Google knows what feeds you are reading and is "indexing your life".

2. Local Data. You have no direct access to the data. Then again, for me, this isn't "my data". It is stuff that is already online.

3. Trust and Local Data. This is a combination of both. Perhaps google goes away with no warning or decides they want to make you pay to access your data. (No I don't see this happening, but it is a legitimate concern.)

So, for me, the pros outweigh the cons. So, for now I am a Google Reader user. Well Google pretty much owns me, I use gmail, google calendars and google reader. I trust them "enough" and would rather have their servers work on my behalf and store my data. Would I be devastated if I lost the 300MB of mail stored on googles servers going back to 2000 or so? Perhaps, but life will go on. But I have no cares if google reader "data" goes away. It's not really my data anyway.