I read a lot of news feeds. I currently have 217 feeds in Google Reader, the reader I am using today, and I would say that I grow the list by one or two a week. I saw that Lifehacker was polling readers on the best news reader, and I realized I just wasn’t sure how I would vote.
I have been using FeedDemon quite happily for a little over a year now, but my thoughts on that changed when I got my EEE PC (running XP). The EEE is really best used to access the Internet, running as little software locally as possible. The user interface for the Newsgator web tool is kinda crappy, and just does not work nicely on the small 7″ screen. I have Google Reader set to open with the feed list hidden, so it actually works very, very well on the EEE PC.
While I can get FeedDemon to run on the EEE PC fine, it just seems easier to use Google Reader. I say that, but FeedDemon has a lot of power that Google Reader does not have. The built in popular topics meme tracker is cool, as is the easy integration with other web services (and Windows Live Writer). The synchronization with the online service means that feeds are always marked as read across multiple computers. The addition or the watches and the clippings folder round out a great set of features. I do wish that FeedDemon had a true River of News function, something I am enjoying with Google Reader.
What is a geek to do? Should I stick with the all web interface of Google, or stick with the functional superiority of FeedDemon.