RSS Bandit is a free RSS reader application for Windows. It is open source, fast, light weight, very capable desktop news aggregator with ability to get RSS, Atom news feeds, and podcasts. The best part is that it integrates with Google Reader, so you can directly pull your feeds from Google Reader and read them in RSS Bandit.
Interface of this RSS reader is like an email client. The interface as shown below is divided into three sections, which make navigating through the application easy. It has been received quiet favorably. Let’s checkout its features and see how it will serve your daily RSS needs.
The application is easy to use, and provides the ability to checkout all news feeds from your Windows desktop in an easy to use interface. The feeds area is simple to navigate, so that you can select the source of your choice with ease. When you click upon a feed to read it in more details then a tab will open up showing the whole web page.
In this manner after you are done reading the main article that you selected, just navigate to the feed details tab again and continue reading other news feeds in a similar manner. The feeds are presented as virtual folders which are easy to manage and navigate through.
To checkout more RSS readers for Windows click here.
To checkout more RSS readers for iOS click here.
To checkout more RSS readers for Android click here.
How to install and configure RSS Bandit RSS reader:
There is nothing special about installation of this RSS reader, just keep on clicking next, and it will be over in a while.
Run this RSS reader by double clicking on the desktop icon or launch it from the start menu. You will see the interface as shown in the above screenshot. Every aspect of this software has been created in such a manner that for most of the users it will be really easy to operate. It looks quiet a bit like old version of MS-outlook.
To see whether the software is working in background just check out the system tray for its icon. If its there as shown below then its working.
This RSS reader comes with some basic RSS feeds pre-subscribed, and the total feeds subscribed are presented in categories as folders in which you will find all your feeds. This makes it really easy to go through the articles of your interest. You can add your new feeds to these folders or create your own folders according to your need.
How to add a New Feed to RSS Bandit:
RSS Bandit comes preloaded with quiet a bit of RSS subscriptions already, which are grouped into various categories. To add a new RSS feed just click on Files -> New Subscription. A wizard will come up, which will guide you through the whole process. Here it will ask you what feed do you want to add and in which folder would you like to keep it in.
Features of RSS Bandit:
- You can sync multiple RSS Bandits installations via WebDAV or FTP. So, you can use the RSS Bandit from multiple computers and all of them will be in sync.
- The software allows you to post comments on RSS feeds, this only working on the sites which allow or support this feature.
- Ability to import and export subscription, so that you can migrate from one computer to other without any problem.
- There are simple keyboard shortcuts for the main functions of this RSS reader. Click here to read the list.
- Download podcasts automatically and listen to then as required.
- Google Reader integration: You can use your google reader account and link it to RSS Bandit, and read the subscribed feeds from your desktop. The articles that you read here will be marked in your Google Reader, further you can subscribe and unsubscribe directly from within RSS Bandit and the changes will be reflected in Google Reader.
- You can even connect your Facebook accounts to RSS Bandit and use it to read news feeds and comment on status updates etc. The process is same as above, but this time select Facebook and click next.
Verdict:
The software offers most of the features that anyone would like and more, so no problem with that. It is really fast and easy to use. The only thing that I did not like was the fact the interface does looks kind of dated, but again because the interface is light and simple, the software keeps running without any problem and does not hog the memory. So i guess its a fair trade off.
