- Client works on both Mac and Windows
- Optimized for fast searches and downloads through Giganews
- Only compatible with Giganews, who have drastically reduced their retention rates
- Must click "download" for each file segment
- API and automation not supported
- No account backup
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Mimo Overview
A good newsreader is essential to your Usenet experience. The appropriate one for you provides the right combination of features and tools for seamless accessibility.
Mimo is a newsreader built by Golden Frog and Giganews and can only be used on Giganews’s service as a result. According to Giganews, this particular browser was built to accommodate their long retention time and fast servers. And to be fair, when Mimo came out it showed a lot of promise. With its modern, minimalist design, Mimo looked like it would quickly become a top contender in the newsreader landscape.
However, its beta version has gone through multiple trials. From the last beta users’ responses, there are still many glitches and bugs that haven’t been addressed. As of October 2019, there haven’t been any new releases nor updates for over 5 years.
Mimo Newsreader: The Things We Like
Like many of its competitors, Mimo is compatible with the two most popular operating systems, Windows and Mac OS X 10.6 and above.
Mimo is built to optimize your activity with Giganews, so if they’re already your Usenet provider, it’ll be easy to set up. The objective was to provide faster browsing, searching, and downloading than other newsreaders.
It has two Usenet search engines, its own proprietary Mimo Usenet Search and the public NZBIndex search. Mimo also doesn’t require third-party tools to verify the integrity of your downloads. Moreover, it automatically downloads RAR and PAR files.
The browser has all the basic features for a seamless Usenet experience: access to favorites, filtering options for searches, image preview, and quick download.
What We Like Less About Mimo Newsreader
Unlike most popular newsreaders on the market, Mimo is not meant to operate with all providers. It is limited to Giganews. This seems like a misstep when marketing to a community that prizes freedom and choice, especially when it comes to what Usenet backbones to invest in.
This has the knock-on limitation of restricting the size of the community you can go to for help. A larger newsreader like SABnzbd has countless forum posts and articles, not to mention a passionate fan base, to help accomplish any specific tasks you’re having trouble with because it doesn’t matter whether you’re on Easynews, Giganews, or some other provider. Everybody can access the software. Since the userbase of Mimo is so small, should you run into an issue, it’s a lot less likely you’ll be able to find the answer without extensive searching, if at all.
With an open-source browser, you have a user base playing with APIs to extend the newsreader’s capacities. With Mimo, you are limited to the basic features that are provided for you by the manufacturers. API integrations are not supported.
Since Mimo is propriety, users were also unhappy to find that they couldn’t back up their accounts. If this is as concerning to you as it is to us, you might want to steer clear of this one.
Bottom Line
Mimo was built to optimize your activity with Giganews. A couple of years ago, if Giganews was your provider, we would absolutely have recommended giving Mimo a try. However, with the absence of Mimo releases since 2014 and the many advances in open-source newsreaders, on top of a drastic reduction in retention over at Giganews supported by an outdated pricing model, you’re better off with a more modern, more supported, more open client.
Mimo had the right idea: providing an easy browsing option optimized for a specific provider. However, with the fast progress of indexers and newsreaders, Mimo tried to maintain too much control which led to a failure to keep up.
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How to Get Started with Mimo Newsreader
To get started with Mimo, you first need to buy a Giganews plan.
You can then download the Mimo client on their website.
Once the installation is complete and you open Mimo, a dialog box will prompt you for your Giganews username and password. After you enter it, the dialog box disappears, and you are now ready to get started.
