Yes, much cleaner than previous version...

Yes, now you can open in browser on the curve. Thanks.

How's the scrolling and UI performance these days, has it quickened? I've been using Freerange for awhile, Viigo was a bit too sluggish for me in the UI, I would scroll down and there were pauses due to slow code inside "doing stuff"... and I hate laggy UI apps.

Viigo Virtual Reach Download

Yes I like it. Seems snapier.

I used the Blackberry Cool download. Does it matter?

don't think so

This version seems quicker all around. Could just be in my head but updates, scrolling and even picture loading have been quicker.

I also noticed that this version seems to manage duplicate stories much better. I would get a lot of identical stories in the last version.

Yes much better, cleaner and it would seem, faster.

As mentioned above, I haven't used it in quite some time (6mo?) - last night I reinstalled and reconnected my account. I can 100% say for sure this version is a LOT snappier and quick to respond that what it used to be, and by no small amount. They've improved the code to the point I don't notice any lag (which is the point), whereas before it was just painful.

On my 8320 Viigo and Freerange now perform at the same level, it's eerie how similar they are these days. Definitely neck-and-neck competition going on here, may the best reader win! I'll continue to compare both, I don't see a clear winner - compared to a year ago, this is a huge win-win scenario for all BlackBerry users. We go from having acceptable choices that work to having two great choices that make it hard to choose the better one.

The main reason I would want a news reader is for off-line reading while traveling. I spend way too much time on airplanes. It looked like a large percentage of the feeds were only headers. So to read the full article, you have to download one at a time. Am I missing an option to download all news stories for later reading?

I can do this now with MobiPocket and store the articles on the Media Card. I do like the Viigo interface and feed management tools. But I really need to have everything already on the device once I am on a plane.

I was curious, I just checked both - Freerange has Viigo beat hands down in this department.

Viigo offers one option to "Save all on Exit", and it does download the article text during update (but not images). So, if you enable that option (it also has a Prompt setting so you can choose dynamically) and set the app to Exit when you press escape (not move to the background, the default) then I *think* you'll get what you want. There is one setting to indicate how many (total) articles to store and that's it.

Freerange, however, goes way way beyond this - there are individual settings for how many articles to download, the sizes of each, the size of the stored article cache itself, how much image data to store, and all sorts of other fine grained controls. I have most of mine set to 0 (0 = all) and it's been working just fine. But of course, Freerange costs $$$.

EDIT: I just re-read your statement again and you specifically mention airplanes. Freerange has a specific 'Flight Mode' set of settings to cater to folks in your position, Viigo does not (yet). Maybe write them an email and request the features you need?

I use bloglines which fits nicely with Viiigo but I would definitely like to to look at free range.

Is Free Range the product that gives you a specific number of free reeds? If so, then that may be the reason why Viigo looks more attractive to some.

yah, I think it's... 10? feeds before you have to pay, which seems like a reasonable business model to me. One positive is that there is no reduced functionality (that I'm aware of) if you're running it in < 10 feed mode.

I do not mind opening my wallet. I had been using bloglines and VIIGO grabs my bloglines acct which is nice. I will definitely try free range at some pt.

Thank you.

I will have to download this and finally get rid of that annoyance

Definitely agree rivviepop; noticeable improvement!

I paid for FreeRange and was using it for a while before I tried Viigo. I did not realize right away that Viigo does not download full articles so that they can be read "offline". This is a nice feature of FreeRange. However FreeRange feels "slower" and one thing which I use constantly is the "post to del.icio.us" so I can read things on my PC later, and on FreeRange it takes like 6 or 7 clicks to make these posts, while Viigo does it in 2 clicks. I would like to keep both of them on my BB but I feel they hog memory and slow down the phone so -- 1 of them must go. I am not sure which to keep!!

Someone help me decide! I sort of lean towards Viigo actually because it feels "faster"...... I wish there was a comparison/review somewhere? (is there?)

Are you using the latest (2.2.8) version of Freerange? Posting to del.icio.us takes 2 clicks (well, technically 4 if you count menu key strokes); click 1 from the menu takes you to where you add tags, click 2 posts it. If you have "show confirmation" turned on, then there's a 3rd click to dismiss that (but I turn it off).

I'm not trying to make this sound anti-Viigo, but facts are facts. I just did the same thing with Viigo and it's Delicious support is amateur compared to Freerange; you cannot set 'not shared' in Viigo, you can't post it to Delicious from the article list (you have to be in the article itself), there's no global config to store common options. Viigo also does not allow you to enter notes when posting the article, but Freerange does. In short, Freerange support all the Del.icio.us features whereas Viigo supports just the basic idea. (but it's great they both support it!)

I also don't feel slowness - Freerange 2.2.8 and Viigo 2.2.70 feel the same speed. This is on an 8320 though, I don't know how it compares to the 8300 you list, maybe there's a difference on your device or OS (it happens). Viigo is definitely really zippy though!

What I do like a lot about Viigo is adding/searching for new feeds, they've got a superb interface for this and it's much richer than what's offered by Freerange. I also like the special Viigo Bulletins channel they have, and the status messages are really cute (i.e. during setup it's "Please wait while we connect some wires..." and such, a little humour). It's nice when a piece of software has the human touches like that, it gives you the warm fuzzies.

I have used free range and I prefer viigo any day

Viigo is great. Better now that they fixed the browser issue.

Well for me the whole point of the feed reader on my bb was to be able to catch up while I am "offline" (i.e., plane, train, etc) where I have no EDGE. So for me that is a deal-breaker for Viigo and I have switched back to FreeRange which can schedule automatic full-story downloads while I am in a service covered area and save them for later. Even though it's a little slower and throws java errors from time to time I think the trade-off is worth it. Hopefully they will fix bugs in a future release... 2.2.8 is starting to show its age a little. And a "1-click post to del.icio.us" would be GREAT!! (hint hint)

I really think something is wrong with your install, you should talk to Support - they're nice and friendly. I have around 18 feeds of all sorts (read daily, maybe... 200 articles a day?) and don't experience slowness or *any* (none, period) java errors on my device, and we're running almost the exact same OS. I suspect something is not quite right with yours and needs to be repaired. The team is very receptive to input and fixing bugs...

Based on which features do you lean to Viigo? I'm still mashing the buttons on both, and one thing that makes me lean towards Freerange and not Viigo is that article titles in Freerange line wrap and fit on screen, but in Viigo they scroll off the right hand side with ellipses instead. My associated gripe is that I feature requested Viigo to add line wrapping over 8 months ago, they don't seem very receptive to fixing UI problems like this.

I really dislike non-line-wrapping headlines, it's a pain to use on such a small screen device. :( (this issue happens in a lot of apps, not just Viigo)

Wirelessly posted (Verizon 8830: BlackBerry8830/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

Anyone using Bloglines on Viigo?
I see there is a one hour delay if the feeds originate from bloglines.

I like the fact that if I change BBs all I have to do is reinstall my account and boom I have all my articles.

I like that viigo i can add as many articles as I want and its still free

I like that they seem to update there product fairly frequently.

I like that I have never not been able to connect to them.

I dont understand line wrapping what exactly is that.

What I think he means by line wrapping is that on the main screen that list all your feeds. If a name of a feed is long, it gets cut off from being displayed.

Just my quess

Hmmm, I can't take screenshots (on linux here) but it sorta looks like this:

Title from BoingBoing feed:
"Microwave beam designed to fry electrical system of cars"

Freerange displays it:
* Microwave beam designed to fry electrical
system of cars

Viigo displays it:
* Microwave beam designed to fry ....

So to finish reading the article header to see if you even *want* to read that article, you have to click on it to get to the rest of the title (Viigo). My comment is that line-wrapping like Freerange does is more efficient and results in many less clicks for me, as I scan lots of headlines and make on the spot decisions whether to read them. Not wrapping the line and instead using ellipses make my RSS reading highly inefficient.

Ok I understand now. That really doesnt bother me it really only takes second to skim over it and see if i really want to read it anyway. I can understand where that would aggrivate some though.

Is it true that you're only allowed 10 feeds in Freerange?

if you want to pay you can have more.

Viigo is a nice product but I still prefer Bloglines. I can keep my feeds in sync between desktop and mobile by using the mobile client on my BB. If I could do that with Viigo I would give it a try.

Wirelessly posted (Verizon 8830: BlackBerry8830/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

Another advantage of Bloglines is that it is more universal. It is usually transferable with whatever rss client that becomes available

Both Viigo and Freerange suport importing an OPML file, and Freerange supports exporting an OPML file as well. I'm not sure why Viigo doesn't support export, maybe they're working on it.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPML for anyone reading and you don't know what it is)

Now who wants to do that?

when there is a free reader that works just fine, not me!

Viigo folks are on the forums and listening to our users feedback, comments, feature requests, suggestions, likes, dislikes... so feel free to post your requests here... or contact us directly: .


Pete

I really am about to give up on this viigo thing. I have used it for a while now, but the whole account thing is dorked. I have tried to set up an account but the option on the BB doesn't accept anything. The website itself is not straight forward. How about a "Create an accout" button or something. Grrrrr!

Everytime I have had to reset my device, I lose all my feeds and have to set it all back up from scratch. I assume the account aspect would remedy this, but it is not user friendly.

I didnt have any isses at all, I found it very straight forward just sent an sms to myself just like it said and I was up and running