I thought I would give FeedDemon a try as suggested by Jeffro2pt0 and also because it’s free. Who can pass up free software with good reviews? Not me.
I am not writing a full review, but more of a short first time experience with FeedDemon. I hope that by sharing my experience, I can help others decide if FeedDemon is the right software to use.
I started off by importing a file I exported from Google Reader and FeedDemon only imported very few feeds. A bug? I had to tell it to import a second time and it added more that was missing. Since I am subscribed to so many, I don’t know if it’s still missing some feeds. I will assume it found what was left.
I have to say my favorite feature is the Panic Button. What is the Panic Button? Say you have 1,000 feed items to read and don’t have the time. Hit the Panic Button and mark all items, items older than 24 hours, 48 hours, etc. as read. That is the best feature to have. I usually try to skim through all items, but sometimes you just have to let them go. I went ahead and marked all items as read since I had previously gone through them in Google Reader and didn’t need to go through them a second time. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find out how to add the Panic Button to the toolbar in FeedDemon.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m used to how simple Google Reader is to use, but I still feel myself going back to it. FeedDemon makes me feel like it will just fill up with items, eventually filling up my hard drive. And no other feed reader that I’ve tried seems to have the feature to automatically mark an item as read when I’ve passed it. That’s the one feature I like about Google Reader that has kept me hooked.
FeedDemon seems okay, but not exactly what I want. So, again, it seems I’m back to Google Reader. Anyone have any other recommendations on feed readers that might be more similar to how Google Reader works? I want one that will save me time, instead of clicking to mark each item as read or having to remember to mark all items as read when I’m done looking at them.
