One Week with RSSBandit

Last Monday I fired up SharpReader for the first time in close to five days. I was out of town the previous week and didn't have Internet access during the day. At night, I was either too tired or too busy to keep caught up on my feeds. During the lengthy update process, SharpReader locked up on me. I had to kill it with Task Manager. I started it up again and after a few minutes of updating, it was again locked up. I did this about two more times and it finally managed to complete the update process. I really don't know what was killing it -- the sheer volume of information to download? Perhaps. I was irked enough to download, install and try RSSBandit.

With about one week under by belt, I have to say I really like RSSBandit. The interface is clean and simple, very similar to SharpReader. I love the "Special" folders it has:

• Unread Items -- A single place to list all unread items.
• Items For Review -- You can flag news items for review/followup. This special folder lists only items you've flagged.

Alas, no software is perfect. RSSBandit seems to be a bit pickier about formatting of RSS/Atom. Feeds I've been subscribed to and downloading successfully for months with SharpReader occasionally get flagged has having an error in RSSBandit. The error links directly to feedvalidator.org allowing you to check the feed itself for errors. At times the feed is, indeed, in error. Maybe SharpReader just wasn't as picky and consumed the feed. However, many times feedvalidator.org gives me the all clear -- "Congratulations! This is valid RSS". So why did RSSBandit complain? Don't know.

Despite these issues, I don't see myself going back to SharpReader. RSSBandit is slick! And I haven't had a single lockup all week.