Unison: Mac OS X Newsreader

By Jonathan Berohn

As a general rule, despite my personal loathing for some of their business tactics and personalities, I generally find Microsoft's products to deliver everything they promise. I've been using MS Word on my Mac since version 3.0, and I couldn't see switching anytime in my foreseeable future. I can't say the same thing about MS Entourage, though. Entourage is Microsoft's new, spiffed up version of its classic email program, Outlook. The e-mail side of Entourage is serviceable, but the newsreader is absolutely horrible. That's where Panic.com's Unison comes in to save you time and frustration - and lots of both.

A Newsreader Built for Reading News

Certainly part of Entourage's problem is that it's not built to be a newsreader. Unison is, and it shows. First of all, Unison makes it easy for you to find what you are interested in. It not only guides you very intuitively through the cluttered world of Usenet, it also picks out the most popular newsgroups and offers easy access to them. Looking for music or movies? They are just a few easy clicks away.

The big advantage Unison has is in its engine. First of all, it automatically downloads all the parts of a post puts them together. Entourage makes you do that manually. No more downloading 25 parts of a song and stitching it back together with an outside program (legal downloading only of course - you know the disclaimer). And if that's not enough, Unison does everything from listing articles to downloading files much faster than Entourage.

The Downside

The only real negative for Unison is the price. At only $24.95 it's hardly a bank-breaker, but since most of us already own MS Office - and thus have Entourage - that's an extra $24.95. If you like to read newsgroups, though, it's money well spent. You'll save hours in no time if you read Usenet regularly, and you'll save the money on hair replacement since you won't be pulling yours out waiting for Entourage to display the latest list of article headers. Since Unison is shareware, you have to buy it directly from Panic.com. You can also download a fully functional version of the program there for a free trial.